Verdict: Syrupy feel-good movie just doesn't ring true, despite Gooding's quietly dignified performance.

By BOB TOWNSEND
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Everybody has a story. Some are even worth telling. The story of James Robert Kennedy, nicknamed “Radio” because of his habit of riding around Anderson, S.C., on a grocery cart playing a transistor radio, was reported in 1996 in a Sports Illustrated article by Gary Smith.

This real-life feel-good story, now a syrupy feel-good movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Radio, goes back to 1964 and continues today. For nearly 40 years, the mentally disabled Kennedy has been a fixture in Anderson as the No. 1 fan at T.L. Hanna High School football and basketball games. A long series of coaches have made him a part of Yellow Jackets teams by having him help out at practices and on the sidelines during games.

To tell Radio's tale, director Michael Tollin, who's done other sports movies, including “Varsity Blues” and “Summer Catch,” had to compress time. He brings events down to a single season in the 1970s and focuses in on former football coach Harold Jones (Ed Harris), who first reached out to Kennedy and not only kept him from being institutionalized, but enabled him to attend T.L. Hanna as a special student.

While you can tell Tollin has a genuine love for the unlikely story of Jones and Kennedy, the movie spends too much time trying to create drama with hero and villain clichés — like locker room bullies with insensitive fathers who think winning is the only thing. That's too bad, because it misses the chance to get to the heart of why we often find inspiration in the innocence and enthusiasm of small-town characters like Radio.

The screenplay by Mike Rich, who wrote “The Rookie” and “Finding Forrester,” is like a pastiche of so many episodes of “The Andy Griffith Show,” with Harris as Andy, but dressed as Bear Bryant. There's lots of homespun moralizing, as the coach hangs out at the barber shop after games, drinking coffee and schooling the townsmen in thinking right.

The dialogue is often hackneyed and more often just plain bland. The movie only rises above it because of the performances of Harris and Gooding — who is utterly believable as the shy but charmingly affable Radio. His performance maintains a quiet dignity that cuts through the schmaltz and James Horner's manipulative score. Not faring as well are Alfre Woodard as the tough but kind principal and Debra Winger as Jones' football-widow wife.

It's hard being hard on this well-meaning movie. It makes you feel like another one of the bullies. But the only thing that really rings true comes at the very end, when the real-life characters appear on the screen.

Then you feel cheated, as you get a too-brief glimpse of their humanity and joy, and you're left thinking that the Radio story would have made a much better documentary than a feature film.

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