'Radio' sends out signals of goodness

Friday, October 24, 2003

By Barry Paris, Post-Gazette Film Critic

I wish we could still use the word "retarded" but, since we can't anymore, we have to call James Robert Kennedy "mentally challenged." Political correctness is a bulky thing.

	'RADIO' RATING: PG for mild language. STARRING: Cuba Gooding Jr., Ed Harris, Debra Winger, Alfre Woodard, Riley Smith, Sarah Drew. DIRECTOR: Michael Tollin.

"Radio" is nothing if not politically correct -- rather anachronistically so for a film set in the South of the 1960s. But it is so sweet and uplifting and enjoyable, we can forgive the fact that it wears its virtues on its sleeve.

The goodness comes from Gooding, as in Cuba Junior. He plays the title character, J.R. Kennedy, obsessed with portable music as he makes his scavenger rounds with a grocery cart in tiny Anderson, S.C. He speaks rarely and semi-unintelligibly, with a black outcast's healthy fear of the white townsfolk.

One of those folks is a cut above the rest: popular high school football Coach Harold Jones (Ed Harris), who takes on Radio as a personal and team project. Coach is a great guy and good husband (to Debra Winger) but a rather neglectful father (to Sarah Drew). We suspect he wishes he had a son instead of a daughter.

In any case, the women in his family wish he'd spend more time with them, and the citizens of Anderson wish he wouldn't let Radio spend so much time with the football team. On and off the field, there are lessons to be learned all around.

It's based on a true story and set of characters chronicled in a 1996 Sports Illustrated article by Gary Smith.

Director Michael Tollin was hitherto best known as director of the Oscar-nominated documentary, "Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream." He has a nice touch with sports action and the ability to depict it without excessive histrionic heroics.

More important, he guides Gooding and Harris through a gentle performance duet that is affecting without being cloying. They are a kind of gridiron Gregory Peck and Brock Peters in a kind of low-key, latter-day "To Kill a Mockingbird."

It's a tad simplistic and patronizing. But -- judging by the enthusiastic audience reaction at the preview -- Columbia-Tristar has a crowd-pleasing hit on its hands.

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