New York Daily News Friday, March 29, 1996 Alley Shines in "Radiant" TV Film By Eric Mink

 

YOU CAN nitpick "Radiant City" apart, or you can sit back and be captured by its spell. Subtract all the little missteps and there are more than a few and what's left is still a warm, rewarding made-for-TV movie (Sunday at 9 on ABC) that evokes a vanished slice of time and place and, more importantly, explores with respect and honesty the hearts and minds of honorable, complicated characters.

"Radiant City," besides being the title of the film, also is the name of the fictional south Brooklyn low-income housing development where the characters live and the story unfolds.

The time is the early 1950s, when low-income housing offered a not-quite-city, definitely-not-suburbs response to the explosion of residential demand by the new families of postwar GIs.

It's worth noting that Lewis Colick, the movie's writer and co-executive producer, was reared in Coney Island.

Colick and director Robert Allan Ackerman focus on the Goodmans, two parents and two kids crammed into a small apartment in one of Radiant City's buildings. Al (Clancy Brown) drives a mail truck on the night shift; Gloria (Kirstie Alley) runs the household with primary responsibility for the kids, a mildly irritating teenage daughter and a sweet and funny son of about 10 (Adam Lamberg).

Director Ackerman convincingly establishes the texture and tone of 1950s life in the projects: the collective existence, the lack of privacy, the greasy doo-wop singers, the endless gossiping, the arbitrary rules, the condescension from bureaucrats, the goofy clothes and glorious cars.

But at its center, this is a movie about Gloria's stubborn, restless independent spirit and her determined pursuit of dreams of a better life for herself and her family.

You'd be hard-pressed to criticize any of the acting in this movie. Young Lamberg is irresistibly lovable, Gil Bellows is deceptively charming as a new neighbor, and Brown as husband Al manages to avoid stereotypes in a role that easily could have slipped in that direction.

Clearly, though, Alley is the star, exhibiting extraordinary acting range and an ability to bring to life a character who is strong yet vulnerable, direct yet repressed, kind of nutty yet grounded, wayward yet steadfast.

Whether she is throwing a tantrum, defending her kids, flirting with infidelity, defying authority or confronting Al with the promises he hasn't kept, Alley makes Gloria a hero that viewers will love and applaud.

True, the film sometimes lets texture get in the way of content, there are a couple of pointless subplots, and the ending is a bit too tidy.

Even so, "Radiant City" gleams with the brilliance of Alley's performance as Gloria. See for yourself.

 

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