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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Based on a true story--serious tissue warning Dec 06, 2008
"Radio" is based on a true story of a mentally challenged young Black man (played by Cuba Gooding) who is befriended by a South Carolina football coach (played by Ed Harris). The story takes us through a school year where initially a nonverbal Radio is taunted by drivers and the football team. When the Coach takes him in and starts turning him into a mascot, the young man goes through a pretty miraculous transformation.
This isn't a football film. It's a film about life and as the Coach says it, "What's really important."
I've enjoyed both Harris and Gooding in many of their roles. In my humble opinion, this is the one they'll go down in history for.
WARNING: Have a box of tissues close at hand. You're going to need them.
Rebecca Kyle, December 2008
Radio Nov 25, 2008
This wonderful film teaches us one person who cares can make a difference. I loved this movie when I first saw it a few years ago. I purchased it as a gift. I received the movie and a couple of others very quickly. They were packaged beautifully and arrived in great shape. I'll be buying more movies from your huge selection.
The heart may also be the brain Oct 08, 2008
A simple film about humanity, humaneness, just plain life and what it should be. The question here is about the place of a mentally disabled person in our society. Is he supposed to be pushed on the side and kept there in the margin or is he supposed to be helped to find a place inside where he could be useful to himself, to others, and happy too? I guess when stated like that the challenge would be accepted by anyone. Asking the question is answering it, as the saying has it. But if we move to the South in the early integration days and if the mentally disabled person is black, what can we do? And asking that second question reveals what it is all about then? Not about the retard as some are going to call him, but about the racial difference. And that is what the film shows with great emotion and subtlety. And the coach in the film is white and he is doing just what he feels is good and that creates some kind of a stir and the stir from some white parents will be solved essentially by the high school students themselves who adopt the boy and make him their mascot one said, but that was false. He was more a mirror into which they saw the challenge of sport, the challenge it is to live up to something you have never done and don't know yet how to do. And that mirror was teaching a lesson of courage and enthusiasm to the teens or young men and they learned that lesson with style, gusto and charm. They learned how to love the one who was pulling them up from the dirt into the sky. A model in life is not necessarily a Hollywood star, but he can be just someone who could be bitter and defeated and yet finds in himself the strength and the inspiration to accept and face his limits and then step over them and climb. Yes you can climb into a tree even if you have no legs or no arms. The climbing is first of all in your head and if it is not there, you will never climb the tree even if you have twenty legs. That's what the film is about and the bigots who resist that lesson are just off the point and out of focus.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
"It's Never A Mistake When You Care For Someone" ~ Learning To Measure Things By More Than Just Wins And Loses Sep 28, 2008
I initially didn't want to watch this film, for some reason I don't enjoy films about the mentally challenged. i don't exactly know why, I just don't. However my wife wanted to see it so reluctantly I finally gave in to the pressure and agreed. I must admit I was very pleasantly surprised.
The '03 film 'Radio' turned out to be an inspirational and uplifting true life story ala 'Rudy' that leaves it's audience filming good about themselves and the world around them. Cuba Gooding Jr. is magnificent as James Robert Kennedy (aka: Radio), the mentally challenged young man that wins the heart of the Hanna High School football coach, the school and eventually the entire town of Anderson, South Carolina. Ed Harris is also exceptional as coach Harold Jones who takes Radio off the streets and provides him with an opportunity to lead a fulfilling life.
'Radio' is a wonderful film that the whole family can enjoy and learn from together!
2 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 No Multiple Stars Here Aug 03, 2008
Being the parent of an autistic child and volunteering in a disability ministry, I must confess that I was disappointed by the portrayals in this film. Radio is unrealistic. He can do no wrong. When he does wrong, someone put him up to it. It's hard to believe that he comes out of his shell and starts talking so fluently so quickly. I personally know people of varying degrees and types of disability, and they have bad sides. Based on Radio's portrayed developmental level, they would poke through more clearly. People like this need to be trained out of those behaviors, or they will become nuisances to themselves and society. The principal of the school looks and acts like she is straight out of the 2000s. The coach's daughter was a flat character who was a little whiny. It is hard to believe that the students who once persecuted him would turn so nonchalantly into his adoring allies. Additionally, wasn't there a law by 1976 that said special education was a mandatory offering in the public schools? Why wasn't he in school before? Also, it is unclear exactly how Radio helps the team. The team only goes .500. There is no sense of triumph or overcoming adversity to achieve greatness like there was in the great "Remember the Titans." I believe the film set out to be like "Titans,"(which I heartily recommend instead) but it seems like a low budget effort with blunders here there and everywhere. I suggest "Rain Man" also.
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