Trying to answer this one for my MIL. She remembers a movie, but has no specifics. After spending 20 minutes on Google & IMDB… no luck.
She says it was about a jewish family that starts a furniture store after receiving some sort of windfall of money. The store eventually burns down due to some kids lighting firecrackers inside.
She thinks the movie was made in the 70s or 80s. She saw it on TV, so it could very well have been a made for TV movie type thing. But who knows?
Anyone?!
Sounds like **Avalon** to me.
This is what immediately sprung to mind for me as well. But it would have been early 90s, not 70s or 80s, so maybe she got the time frame wrong?
That’s definitely Barry Levinson’s Avalon, from 1990. It intentionally feels like an older movie though.
Part of a loose trilogy - Diner, Avalon, Tin Men.
All excellent.
Thanks all! She’ll be ecstatic!
Once again, the SDMB comes to the rescue.
Not exactly… The young son of Aidan Quinn’s character has a habit/hobby of building model airplanes and then using the air plane glue to light a fire trail and burn the planes. He does this in the basement of the store at one point. I believe he get called up from the basement and leaves the plane buring. The next day they learn that the store has burned down. The boy thinks he caused it and confesses to his father, who reveal that it was a wiring problem that caused the fire.
IIRC, there was no “windfall of money,” either, just the brothers’ savings from their door-to-door sales work.
Great movie.