as the children. The budget was set at $17–18 million after Evans agreed to cut some expensive effects sequences. However, Stonebridge executives found the dailies disappointing, and after 10 days of filming, Douglas shut down production, at a loss of $5 million. Douglas then recruited Richard Donner as the film's new director. With Evans's blessing, Donner accepted with a $5 million paycheck, while his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner came on board. Evans remained on the film as an executive producer. With the major players recast, Radio Flyer resumed production that October. Donner had Evans rewrite the script extensively to find a way to balance escapist fantasy and child abuse without alienating the audience. The film's original ending featured a present-day coda where a now-adult Mike, played by Tom Hanks, takes his children to the National Air and Space Museum, where the Radio Flyer/Plane hybrid is displayed next to the Wright Brothers' flying machine. Test audiences were confused by this ending and re-shoots led to the modern-day prologue and epilogue seen in the final film. A video game adaption of the film was being developed for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Ocean Software. The film was dedicated to the memory of script supervisor Nancy Benta Hansen and uncredited production assistant Simone Fuentes, "whose professionalism and humor we miss." Reception On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 35% based on reviews from 40 critics. The site's consensus is: "Overlaying its whimsical concept onto a gritty story of domestic abuse, Radio Flyer is a family film that is too harrowing for children and too saccharine for their parents." Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin both criticized the film for presenting fantasy as a way of escaping child abuse. Said Ebert, "I was so appalled, watching this kid hurtling down the hill in his pathetic contraption, that I didn't know which ending would be worse. If he fell to his death, that would be unthinkable, but if he soared up to the moon, it would be unforgivable—because you can't escape from child abuse in little red wagons, and even the people who made this picture should have been ashamed to suggest otherwise." Because the film in fact ends with Bobby successfully evading his stepfather forever, viewers (including Ebert himself) have taken to speculating on the "true" ending, assuming that the one presented was a case of an unreliable narrator. References