"Actor: Don Pardo"

• Radio Days | DVD | (11/03/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Woody Allen's gentlest and most unassuming movie, Radio Days isn't so much a story as a series of anecdotes loosely linked together by a voice-over spoken by the director. The film is strongly autobiographical in tone, presenting the memories of a young lad Joe (clearly a stand-in for Allen himself) growing up in a working-class Jewish family in the seafront Brooklyn suburb of Rockaway during the late 1930s and early 40s. In this pre-TV era the radio is ubiquitous, a constant accompaniment churning out quiz shows, soap operas, dance music, news flashes and Joe's favourite, the exploits of the Masked Avenger. Given Allen's well-publicised gallery of neuroses, you might expect childhood traumas. But no, everything here is rose-tinted and even the outbreak of war makes little impact on the easygoing, protective tenor of family life. Now and then Allen counterpoints his family album with the doings of the radio folk themselves (blink, and you'll miss a young William H Macy in the studio scene when the news of Pearl Harbour comes through). The rise to fame of Sally (Mia Farrow), a former night-club cigarette girl turned crooner, is the nearest the film comes to a coherent storyline. But most of the time Allen is content to coast on a flow of easy nostalgia, poking affectionate fun at the broadcasting conventions of the period and basking in the mildly rueful Jewish humour and small domestic crises of Joe's extended family. There aren't even any of his snappy one-liners, and the humour is kept low-key, raising at most an indulgent smile. A touch of Allen's usual acerbity wouldn't have come amiss. But for anyone who shares these memories, Radio Days will surely be a delight. On the DVD: Not much besides the theatrical trailer, scene menu and a choice of languages. The screen's the full original ratio, but nothing seems to have been done to enhance the soundtrack, and the dialogue's not always clear. A boost in volume may help.--Philip Kemp

• Saturday Night Live - The Best Of Mike Myers | DVD | (05/04/2004) from £20.77   |  Saving you £-14.78 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Best of Mike Myers is a compilation of sketches from his six seasons on the American show Saturday Night Live, and features the star in his pre-Austin Powers days appearing in various garbs and characters, though not as Powers himself. There are, however, two Wayne's World segments, Myers' other great cinematic triumph (in collaboration with Dana Carvey), in which he plays the zonked-out heavy-metal dude who presents a cable show from his basement. One features Aerosmith guesting, waylaid by Wayne's mum and given the tour of the house, or "walk of shame"; the other has Madonna, in a parody of her In Bed With... era. Other characters include Sprockets, a stern and Teutonic techno-obsessed host, and Lothar of the Hill People, an ancient chieftain. Considering he is Liverpool-born, Myers is happy to peddle some curious American stereotypes of the British: that they have bad teeth, as in the "Hedley & Wyche" sketch ("one tube lasts a lifetime") or that they all behave like characters from a Terry-Thomas movie. Among the featured guests in these sketches are Steve Martin, Tom Hanks (as Aerosmith's roadie), Nicole Kidman as a six-year-old girl, Roseanne Barr and Danny DeVito. Sometimes, as is SNL's wont, the sketches go on several minutes too long and lack sharpness, while the star guests don't always put in Oscar-winning performances. However, amid the self-indulgence there are a number of very funny moments. On the DVD: The Best of Mike Myers DVD is a straightforward transfer of the TV original with no extra features. --David Stubbs