Product Details

• Actors: Andie MacDowell, John Turturro, Michael Richards, Maury Chaykin, Nathan Watt
• Directors: Diane Keaton
• Writers: Franz Lidz, Richard LaGravenese
• Producers: Bill Badalato, Donna Roth, Franz Lidz, Jackie Rubin, Joseph J. Kelly
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Walt Disney Video
• VHS Release Date: November 12, 1996
• Run Time: 93 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630397788X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #306,307 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

The way that the director, Diane Keaton, examines a Jewish family with an outsider's eye mirrors Woody Allen's take on Protestants: she records the messy, hyperactive lives of two crazy Jewish men with a similar exaggeration of their ethnic tendencies. The story, about a boy who goes to live with his uncles in a time of crisis (his mother is dying), is based on sportswriter Franz Lidz's 1991 memoir; the script, by Richard LaGravenese, spins sentimental cotton candy around the experience. Keaton's style is fluid and detailed, and she gets lovely performances from her actors, particularly Maury Chaykin, as the neurotic uncle who clutters his nest with old newspapers and junk, and John Turturro, as the boy's sad, down-to-earth dad. In the end, though, the film is undone by its shaky premise that crazy people are more in touch with life than their rational counterparts. It tries too hard to make lunacy endearing. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The film's OK, but the book's far, far better, January 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Unstrung Heroes [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Unstrung Heroes is one of my alltime favorite books, and I was deeply disappointed how the filmmakers homogenized, pasteurized, de-ethnisized and generally watered it down. Granted, paring is a function of filmmaking - but the treacley script fails to capture the memoir's honesty, humor or dark irony. Unlike the book, the film wallows in sentimentality. Gone are 2 of the uncles - most missed is Uncle Leo, whom the young boy visits in the asylum that's been his home for more than 30 years. Instead of being genuinely mad and edgy, the two remaining uncles play out like Oscar and Felix on The Odd Couple. (They've been Disneyfied, like the rest of the major characters). And the boy's profoundly evil best friend - Ash - is reduced to a sort of Eddie Haskell. This film loses a lot - mostly an urban edge - by shifting locales from New York City to Pasadena (!!!) On top of that, the father (John Turturro) is shorn of all humor - the Sidney Lidz portrayed in the book was an extremely witty (though deeply flawed) man. Turturro does a fantastic job with a badly scripted, unplayable part. He transcends this disappointing adaptation and warrants 5 stars. And Disney has added all kinds of dopey capers (like the boy "saving" his uncles from eviction) to "move the action along." Really dumb and insulting to the viewer! My advice: Buy the book! It's richly rewarding, still in paperback and dirt-cheap.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A small, calculatingly warm and fuzzy movie, August 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Unstrung Heroes [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It's interesting to watch the jagged leaps and bounds by which this hilarious, unsentimental Lower East Side memoir became a sentimental tearjerker about a beautiful mother dying of cancer in L.A. That Hollywood gets Jewishness wrong again and again should come as a surprise to no one (Remember Melanie Griffith in "A Stranger Among Us"?) But the story of "Unstrung Heroes" is a rather spectacular example of Disney not getting anything about New York at all. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this sanitized ode to motherhood is that it is practically impossible to watch without crying. Billed as a Jewish "Terms of Endearment", it's really just another Light-Hearted Weepie that plucks at the heartstrings pretty darn hard.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What A Missed Opportunity!, July 11, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Albany, N.Y.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unstrung Heroes [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This sappy, syrupy reworking of a splendid memoir is only affecting because it manipilates audiences by focus group-tested Hollywood formula. Sadly, the filmmakers were too callow to take even minimal risks and follow the book, which is exciting and volatile and genuinely affecting. The memoir survives on its honesty -- the film is hollow from its first false frame to its last. Only John Turturro's brilliant performance redeems this cheap, commercial project. But then, what else would you expect from Disney?