Radioland Murders

As Chicago radio station WBN celebrates its first night on the air, someone is murdering the company employees one by one, and the station's secretary and her estranged writer-husband must join forces to find the killer. From the mind of George Lucas, creator of "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones," comes this mystery-comedy-adventure set in the heyday of live radio. It's an enegetic, fast-paced romp, sparkling with a brilliant cast, dozens of guest stars, hilarious complications, and a toe-tapping melange of musical standards.

Despite George Lucas's name in the credits (as executive producer) and several experiments in computer-generated imagery (seamlessly included but to little avail), this film qualifies as a major dog, a door-slamming farce in which the doors are funnier than the people slamming them. Set in a radio studio on a night in 1939 that a new radio network is being launched, the frenetic and scattered story blends a growing pile of corpses, network and sponsor politics, the crazed efforts involved to put on radio shows, and the on-again, off-again marriage of head writer Roger (Brian Benben) and secretary Penny (Mary Stuart Masterson), the only one who seems to have it together. Benben has a Groucho-like sense of timing and delivery, but he can't elevate surprisingly weak comic material. --Marshall Fine