Powerful

How sad is this?

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's 1939. Chicago radio station WGN is starting a new national radio network bringing in an audience to watch the premier broadcast performance. General secretary Penny Henderson (Mary Stuart Masterson) is managing the chaos and trying to break up with husband head-writer Roger Henderson (Brian Benben) after catching him with va-va-va-voom girl Claudette Katsenback (Anita Morris). Station owner General Walt Whalen (Ned Beatty) tries to satisfy sponsor Bernie King (Brion James) who wants massive changes to the script. Trumpet player dies from supposed heart attack. Then the general's incompetent son director Walt Whalen, Jr. (Jeffrey Tambor) is found dead. The police led by Lieutenant Cross (Michael Lerner) is called in. Cross reveals that the trumpet player was poisoned and Roger quickly becomes a prime suspect.The fast-talking, light-speed pace and vast cast is too desperate. It's trying to be wacky but it's never funny. The story is trying too hard to be chaotic and it succeeds by being too chaotic. The situation feels manufactured. I don't know if murders could easily be made into a slapstick comedy. This one fails in the attempt. The look of the movie is good. The production value is the main positive and the actors are trying their best.

This came out the same year as "Bullets Over Broadway", and comparisons might be made, but I enjoy this film on as many levels as that other highly-lauded film. It's manic and silly and implausible, and is the perfect film to chuckle at all the insanity going on.Critics need to lighten up, seriously. Harmless fun, with an impressive cast. Brian Benben is delightful and lovable and his career should have blossomed after this. His energy and self-effacing humor is endearing, and he handles it all with genuine sincerity.Naysayers, I don't care what you think. This is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. I will continue to watch it when I need an attitude adjustment.

I remember watching this in the theater and it being so funny (for so long) that I couldn't breath I was laughing so much. Both my girlfriend and I had to look at the floor of the theater to look away from the screen to try and reduce our laughing because our sides hurt so much.Maybe if I watched it again I might not laugh quite so much but I remember laughing more at this movie than any other. And no, I wasn't a silly teenager at the time, I was in my 30's.I loved the fast, fast pace and the constant stream of jokes and sight gags. It does help if you can pay attention and keep track of everything that is going on. This is not a sophisticated comedy by any means, just a lot of good, clean fun (well, except for the murders). ;-)Just a (very) lot of fun.

What a smartly-written script set against the background of the opening of the world's fourth radio station in 1939 Chicago! The frenetically-paced, highly colorful movie would have been fun and exciting enough except that the writers (based on an idea by George Lucas) "threw in the kitchen sink" by adding murder after murder which started occurring from the moment the Radioland broadcast began. In the meantime, the people backstage were doing all they could to keep the audience out front from detecting that there was a "problem" at Radioland...Onstage a murderous Peter-Lorre look-alike threatened a sweet young thing for the secret ingredient in her potato salad, young boys cheered the famous "black whip," a Lone Ranger look-alike, and a multitude of radio favorites, real and look-alikes, passed by our eyes. Singing sisters, a commercial with a lady onstage in a bathtub advertising bubblebath, and another one with a lady dressed in a cigarette box advertising cigarettes. ("I always thought they should put some kind of warning on those cigarettes," mentions Mrs. Henderson, played by Mary Stuart Masterson, the boss's actual strength behind the Radioland show.) Probably the most frenetic and fantastic of the crew backstage was "Roger Henderson" played by Brian Benben, the head radio writer, who had become the Chicago police's prime suspect in the murders. In his efforts to solve the crime— and prove to his wife that he had not committed adultery with the show's singing "Va-Va-Va Voom girl" (played by Anita Morris who died by the time the movie was released)— Roger ran hither and yon trying to escape arrest. In the whole frenzy of activity, Benben ends up disguised in a whole series of costumes, including as a Carmen Miranda look-alike.One of the radio writers under Roger is a very young Peter McNicol who would gain fame a couple years later in t.v.'s "Ally McBeal" and later in "Numbers" and a lengthened guest performance in "24." Harvey Korman plays the always-drunk and passed-out writing supervisor and Christopher Lloyd plays the Sound Effects man, "Zoltan."Guest appearances on the radio program include George Burns who was alive at the time the film was made, Rosemary Clooney, Billy Barty and some very old-time show-people whose faces I recognized but whose names I do not know. The bandleader "Rick Rochester" was played by Michael McKean who was able to fit the 1930's to a tee with an extra dash of zing.A tour-de-force performance was turned in by newcomer Scott Michael Campbell as the usher "Billy" who after the first murder became called upon to rush around with notes and messages backstage, even rushing onstage to give script edits to the actors and ultimately helping Roger escape.The plot lines were multitudinous: 1.) Would the sponsors of the show—who seemed oblivious to the glitches that occurred onstage because of what was occurring backstage-- be pleased enough to continue their sponsorship? 2.) Would Mrs. Henderson realize that Roger had not been unfaithful to her but had been the victim of the Va-Va-Va-Voom Girl? 3.) Would Roger be able to discover who was behind the murders before he was arrested as the prime suspect? 4.) Would the audience discover that there was a problem behind the scenes? And 5.) Would young Billy succeed in his brand new job at Radioland and please his parents who were in the audience?I only had two problems with the movie: This PG movie opens with Billy trying to run an errand backstage, inadvertently running into the crowded ladies chorus line's dressing room where there are irritated ladies trying to cover-up, and a couple of them are bare-breasted. The scene is rushed so I didn't even see the bare breasts the first time I watched the movie. It was the only "nude" scene and could have been changed so easily. I felt angry about this scene because it was gratuitous and unnecessary and seemed to be there just to get a more mature rating.My other complaint: While I was crazy about Mary Stuart Masterson in "Benny and Joon" that had been made in the 1980's, her performance in "Radioland Murders," especially in comparison to the other actors, was overly low-key, in fact "in the doldrums." She was billed as the star of the show but everybody else in the cast certainly outshined her.Other than these two problems, "Radioland Murders" was a sparkling delight of nostalgia and excitement.