The nostalgic details are charming, there are excellent if skimpy effects (a giant buffalo, a Bigfoot cameo) and the children (Elijah Wood, Joseph Mazzello) are quite wonderful, but it's a puzzling, borderline distasteful film.

Donner and Evans can't find a way to extricate themselves from the impossible structure they have erected. They remain locked into the odd combination of the dreamy and the dreadful that is entirely of their own devising.

A very odd, expensive, ambitious failure that tries hard to achieve the Spielberg touch but succeeds only in reminding you of how few filmmakers can successfully lay claim to his territory.

"Radio Flyer" has managed to acquire something of a fanbase, with those sensitive to the director's earnest intent able to embrace all the shortcomings of the picture, and celebrate its unnervingly accurate read of resilient juvenile energy.