Barry Levinson has gathered a big ensemble cast of great actors including Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth Perkins, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Kevin Pollak, and Joan Plowright.It's a multi-generational story of an immigrant Polish Jewish family in Baltimore. It's Levinson's semi-autobiographical film. As such, it has some funny slice-of-life scenes like the whole family gathered up to see the first TV and the only thing on is the test screen. The family first finds success in selling TV. Eventually the extended family scatter to the winds.It has the grand scale and the feel of the era. It has some great bits of family stories. There are great actors, and Levinson is in charge. All the pieces are in place. This should be a masterpiece, but it's not quite there. The story just go on and on and on. There really isn't any flow that ramps up to a climax. It's just a series of interesting family vignettes coming one after the other. It goes on too long.This is essentially Levinson's home movie reshot onto the big screen. As such it is the best home movie in anybody's dusty attics. But like all those home movies, it probably means more for people who remember those times than those of us who were never there.

What a great film of an immigrant family in America and the changes that take place over generations. This is Levinson's account of his family in his beloved Baltimore. This was a time in America when extended families were the norm and the holidays that unified them. Points up the intrusion of technology (television) in putting distant between people. The film is told in a loving manner and speaks to a time in America that has long disappeared in conjunction with the country's flight from the inner city to the suburbs. Good ensemble cast and Randy Newman's score is great. Don't miss this under-appreciated feel-good movie!

Barry Levinson set out to show that the extended family has expired; the nuclear family is dysfunctional and the cause of our urban, suburban, and exurban blight. Stories passed down from generations, the life blood of our ancestors, have ceased to exist, replaced by stories created from whole cloth by unknown writers sitting in sterile offices, working for substandard wages so they can support their families' television viewing habits and other distractions.The wholesomeness of the extended family, so necessary in the Old World, is not functional in the New World. Families break up, separate, and find, upon reflection, that it is the individual relationships which give us joy, and joy is the operational word that describes this work - joy of the innocent child and later, the joy of being loved, cared for, and wanted.

I love this film. It has it's soapy moments but the comment it makes on how life has changed in the last 100 years is profound. Family is not as important today as it once was. The television has replaced the dinner table as the spot for family gatherings. And yet our relatives and their legacy can shape our lives today if we let it. The stories of our parents and grandparents need to be passed on. Where we came from - who we are. Great things to remember and this film helps you do that. See it soon if you missed it in 1990. (Most people did) One more note - those of you who are interested in seeing a young Elijah Wood - here is your chance.