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RADIO Send This Review to a Friend
Cuba Gooding, Jr. tackles one of those roles that are built to evoke sympathy and show change of pace by an actor. Radio, as his character is nicknamed because he's nuts about radios, is a mentally challenged, bashful young African-American who likes to push his shopping cart along the street and hang out by the fence of a high school athletic field and watch football practice. He's the ultimate outsider, hampered by being slow and simpleminded and inviting ridicule from boys-will-be-boys students who find fun in taunting someone not as fortunate as they are. But Radio has one characteristic that can make him lovable but also vulnerable. He has a big heart and not a mean thought in his head.
If you think all this adds up to a syrupy tale, you're right. It is the sort of film that is meant to make one feel good, and does at times, but you are also aware of buttons being shamelessly pushed to the point where one can overdose on sugar. As for authenticity, we get the information that "Radio" is based on a true story.
One day some of the boys on the football team find sport in abusing Radio by tying him up and locking him in a shed. When Ed Harris as Coach Jones finds him, he is cowering in a corner wracked by fear. The coach is furious and he takes action by running the culprits through excessive practice drills. The coach takes a liking to Radio and gives him various chores to help the team, and soon this leads into radio becoming an enthusiastic mascot, but more importantly, getting a chance to study at school to help make up for his lack of education. But he is still vulnerable to cruel pranks.
Directed by Mike Tollin and written by Mike Rich based on the Sports Illustrated article "Someone to Lean On", "Radio" is based on a real character, whom we see at the end of the film. This is a story of triumph over adversity with the help of human decency, embodied by the restrained but forceful performance of Ed Harris. Debra Winger has a small but bolstering role as the coach's wife. The dramatic tension arises when a local school booster takes offense at the increasingly popular role Radio plays and meanly tries to derail it, much to the chagrin and anger of the coach.
There is also the tender relationship between Radio and his mother, warmly played by television's "Law and Order" escapee S. Epatha Merkerson. In a subplot, the coach's emotionally needy daughter is resentful that her dad pays so much attention to Radio but not much to her. This isn't very believable, since a coach portrayed with so much sensitivity would surely have some for his daughter.
One gets the feeling that in the hostility toward Radio race must play a role. After all, the film is set in the South in the 1970s, and one suspects that retardation would not engender the extent of opposition to Radio's status as we see here. But this is meant to be a film that doesn't want to delve deeply into anything that would veer from the aim to make an audience walk away feeling good about the uplifting outcome and the fine performances. A Revolution Studios/Columbia Pictures release.
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