When does homage become ripoff?

Rating: 5/10 (7 January 2006)

***SPOILER ALERT*** Theodore Dreiser's estate, as well as the screenwriters of A Place in the Sun, should be clamoring for credit and dough. Radio Days was a love letter to Amarcord but it didn't rip it off point for point, beat for beat. I sat there in the theater saying: in the next scene the Shelley Winters character will tell the Montgomery Clift character that she is pregnant... in the next scene the father in law will offer the Montgomery Clift character a spectacular business opportunity... in the next scene, while happily at home with the Elizabeth Taylor character, the Montgomery Clift character will (gasp!) get a call from the police. And having read most if not all of Patricia Highsmith's books, I also knew pretty well how it was going to end. When in an early scene the main character was reading Crime and Punishment I even knew that somehow, one way or another, he was going to kill an old lady in her apartment. And yet... and yet... why five stars? Because over this overcooked oft-eaten meal Woody Allen lays one dazzlingly rich precise detail of life and character after another. One brilliant example--the wealthy parents of a newborn are never ever seen with their baby, because unseen nannies are always caring for it. And in the final scene, when a new baby comes home, the parents don't go anywhere near touching it--the nanny carries it and they coo at it from a distance. Brilliant. Woody, you are a greater director than George Stevens! You don't have to eat his leftovers!