Radio (2003)

★★
Before I discuss the plot of Radio, before I say anything about the acting or credibility, I want to talk about the score, which is among the most annoying and self-important I've ever heard. James Horner is a fine musician, but here, he employs a sickening soundtrack with female vocal overtones to highlight the noble simplicity of the movie's main character. He used music with better results in his vastly superior Titanic score.

I had to get that off my shoulders. As for the rest of Radio, there's some reassurance of a good movie, but the plot tries too hard to make us feel uplifted. As if the true story of James "Radio" Kennedy wouldn't make for a moving film already, director Michael Tollin cranks up the feel-good moments and the obligatory scenes of torment to have us sympathize with Radio.

Ed Harris stars as Coach Harold Jones, a football coach for a South Carolina high school team. The team is going for another shot at the state championships. One day, Jones sees a mentally retarded man, Radio (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), pushing his shopping cart by the football field. For reasons never made clear, except that he's just a nice guy, Jones sort of adopts Radio (so named due to his affection for radios) and makes him a mascot/motivator. The players don't take to his idea at first. Just prior to Jones bringing Radio onboard, players bully him by locking him in a shed and throwing footballs at the sides.

Much of the movie contains scenes designed to grab our affection for Radio. He cries when tormented or embarrassed, he tries to write his name, he leads the team onto the field, he's overjoyed when he accomplishes a task previously beyond his reach, and all of this is played to James Horner's overbearing soundtrack. Radio, as played by Gooding, seems like a good man, and his life may have been something like what we see in this movie, but screenwriter Mike Rich and director Tollin construct the movie like any other movie about an underdog who winds up on top. Surely Radio's true story could have inspired something more original.

A far superior movie about a simple mentally impaired man who achieves more than his roots may have indicated is Forrest Gump. The difference is that Forrest Gump came across as a real person who was thrown into a variety of circumstances (college, Vietnam, a Washington D.C. rally, his cross-country run), and that allowed us to view his predicaments from a unique angle. Radio is simply one cute or clichéd scene after another. Even a town meeting is organized to decide what should be done about Radio, and it happens at the local barber shop of all places.

The positive aspects of the film prevent Radio from sinking very low. Ed Harris is wonderfully effective, if not a bit of a do-gooder, as the coach. I liked his determination to defend Radio, to keep him as part of the high school's social scene. Coach Jones says at one point that "Radio's been the one teaching us." Well, I wouldn't go that far. The only thing the team members learn from Radio is that picking on him will lead to serious punishment. Gooding for once picks a movie that doesn't waste him. Radio is not a completely successful movie for him, but it's a better movie than Boat Trip.

Radio for the most part keeps things moving. There are some surprises. I expected Radio's mother to be adamantly overprotective of her son, which is what would have happened in another movie, but here that isn't the case. She's glad that Radio is having fun at school. There's also a sensible principal (Alfre Woodard) who is willing to stick by the coach, but she understands the sensitive position in which they find themselves by allowing Radio to attend classes. There's stuff here worthy of inclusion in a better movie, but Radio isn't that movie.

© 2003 Silver Screen Reviews