RADIOLAND MURDERS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Lucas aims at recreating the
excitement and mystery that was radio in its Golden Age.
The shot goes wild and instead he has the plot of a 1940s
Bob Hope movie told with the pacing of a video game. A
lot of promise was wasted in among some tired gags.
This is a film with over a hundred speaking actors and
not one real character. Rating: high 0 (-4 to +4)
Back in the days when George Lucas had a perfect instinct for what did and did not work on the screen, Steven Spielberg was hitting a bad patch with films like 1941, a frenetic comedy with contrived scenes that looked too much like clockwork in need of a tune-up. 1941 was full of jokes that could have worked but their timing was off or they just seemed too contrived. Now it is Spielberg who seems to have the feel for what works on the screen and Lucas has produced his own comedy with all the faults of 1941.
The year is not 1941 but 1939, and it is the first night of new radio network, WBN. That is the name of both the network and of the Chicago station where the broadcasts originate. Just minutes before show time the new owner throws out half the scripts for the evening's programs. This is all it takes to turn chaos at the station into pandemonium. And most of the pressure falls on Roger, the chief writer of the station. Roger thought his life was already hectic. Besides writing for the new network he is in the midst of a campaign to win back Penny, his estranged wife who also happens to be the personal assistant to the owner of the station. As bad as things are, they are about to get a lot worse. A phantom voice seems to be going out over the broadcast waves and each time it speaks, somebody at the station is murdered. And who do the police suspect but head writer Roger?
The plot of RADIOLAND MURDERS is straight out of a 1940s comedy-- perhaps with Bob Hope or Cary Grant--but the pacing and rhythms seem tailored more to the music video generation with little short choppy scenes to keep the action moving at a breakneck pace. There is some fun in spotting 40s radio programs being created for this supposed fourth radio network. The shows are mostly imitations of real radio programs from the same time. Though they are not called by the same names we see recreations of "Spike Jones and his City Slickers," "Sam Spade," "The Shadow," and "One Man's Family," as well as shows that never played on the radio, but were in the same spirit. One show called "The Black Whip" is based on Zorro. (The title may be inspired by the movie serial ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP.) Still this is not a very good representation of what radio was like. All shows seem here to be done live with absurdly ornate costumes--an odd expense for radio. Clearly somebody confused radio with early television. Why would anybody puta tap dancer in a large cigarette pack on the radio? Time and again this film sacrifices logic for a piece of spectacle or a gag. In one scene Roger sits on a ledge typing a script, but later when it suits the plot we are told that he is terrified of heights. Also it is absurd that a station owner would wait until the last moment and then throw out all the scripts for the evening just minutes before the evening's programming starts. The fact is that it is the script by Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz, Jeff Reno, and Ron Osborn that needed re-write most. Their imitations of radio drama really fail to catch the spirit of the originals. Admittedly for every good radio drama like "Broadway Is My Beat," there were five silly melodramatic shows like "The Whisperer" or "I Love a Mystery." But even the bad shows on the radio were a lot better than most of the lampoons in this film.
Mel Smith, who directed RADIOLAND MURDERS, is a familiar figure from British comedy television, but he probably never experienced the Golden Age of Radio in America and so is a bad choice to direct. His humor, in the Benny Hill mold, is to throw in lots of gags but not to create any characters on the screen. Roger is played by Brian Benben, who has moments but just is not the talent to carry the film. Benben plays a character similar to Roger but a very different type of humor in his "Dream On" series on HBO. He is the only actor in the film who might have done something with is role, but even he doesn't do much but dress in funny costumes. Mary Stuart Masterson as second lead is on the screen far less and does not have much opportunity to raise her role above a stereotyped Girl Friday.
This is a film that was made because it could look like a lot more than its $10 million price tag. Lucas demonstrates that clever special effects can make an inexpensive film look like it cost a lot more than it did--even for a film that is not science fiction. But in his headlong rush to make this a good-looking film, he neglected the final re-write or two that this script would have needed. And Lucas did not get the right director. The majority of the gags in the dialog just fall flat. Comic scenes go off like clockwork, but lack spontaneity and are just not funny. Admittedly that may not be true of the whole film, there are many very funny scenes that do work. This certainly is a comedy with more laughs than, say, ONLY YOU. But with such paper- thin characters, the look of the film and the gags that do work are just not enough.
For a nostalgic look at pre-war radio, there are better choices for films. There is more authentic period feel in RADIO DAYS or for that matter in THE SHADOW. With a bit more work this could have beena much better film but as it stands I give this one a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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