A well-written serious play by Woody Allen, with an Arthur Miller aftertaste. Set in Brooklyn in 1945, this centers on a family of two teen-age boys, a housewife struggling to keep her family together, and a ne'er-do-well gambler husband who is having an affair and is constantly looking to hit his number. The older son, Paul, is a stuttering recluse with dreams of becoming a magician. Well-written and with some poignancy, but ultimately bleak and depressing, with an unsatisfying resolution. ( )

This is from the early 1980s, when Allen first turned away from straight comedies with "Interiors" and "Stardust Memories." It's a surprisingly ordinary family drama, less interesting than either of those two scripts.

The ingredients are common: cheating, gambling father, desparate mother, one kid who admires gangsters, the other a stuttering agoraphobe who skips school to practice magic tricks. Nothing surprising happens; the language is neither clever, beautiful, nor forceful; nothing is implied about the larger society.

It has one interesting metaphor: everyone wishes they could do their own personal vanishing act, and one of the characters might indeed vanish, but most likely at the hands of loansharks. ( )