Radio | 
| Director: Michael Tollin
Actors: Cuba Gooding Jr., Ed Harris, Debra Winger, S. Epatha Merkerson, Alfre Woodard
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy Used: $0.21
You Save: $14.73 (99%)
New (94) Used (281) Collectible (3) from $0.21
Rating:  135 reviews
Sales Rank: 12977
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Region: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 109 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 0 x 0 x 0
MPN: TM2560
ISBN: 1404935827
UPC: 040198001540
EAN: 9781404935822
ASIN: B00008EY60
Theatrical Release Date: October 24, 2003
Release Date: September 7, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Since winning an Academy Award for his exuberant performance in Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding Jr. has gotten little but static from critics for a spate of calamitous career choices not seen since '80s-vintage Burt Reynolds. But he triumphantly returns to Oscar-worthy status with his moving performance as Radio, a mentally challenged young man, whom South Carolina high school football coach Harold Jones (Ed Harris) takes under his nurturing wing. This does not play well with the school's patient but questioning principal (Alfre Woodard); the school's biggest athletic booster, who views Radio as a distraction; the man's son, the team's star player, who plays cruel pranks on the trusting Radio; and the Coach's teenage daughter, who feels neglected. Almost all will be won over by Radio's trusting and good nature. Based on a Sports Illustrated story, Radio was adapted for the screen by Mike Rich, screenwriter of The Rookie, and as in that superior family film, the heroics are mostly off the field. As Coach says, with all the subtlety of a blitz, "We're not the ones been teaching Radio; he's the one been teaching us." The ending, in which we see the actual Radio, still cheering his team on 26 years later, will melt the most cynical hearts. --Donald Liebenson
Product Description
Football coach Harold Jones (Harris) befriends Radio (Gooding), a mentally-challenged man who becomes a student at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina. Their friendship extends over several decades, where Radio transforms from a shy, tormented man into an inspiration to his community.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 130 more reviews...
Almost Too Good To Be True April 15, 2009
Craig Connell (Lockport, NY USA)
This was unusual: a modern-day film which was ultra-nice. In fact, it was so nice it bordered on being too hard to believe in parts. As I watching this based-on-a-real-life story, I was thinking, "nobody is this good, this tolerant."
Mainly, I was referring to Ed Harris' role as "Coach Jones." I think they went a little overboard on his character, but that's better than the reverse: showing him worse than what he was in real life. Anyway, I never complain about a nice, feel-good film, and it is nice to see a bunch of well-meaning, kind people.
Those folks direct their friendship, love and compassion to "James Kennedy," better known as "Radio," a mentally slow high school kid played by Cuba Gooding Jr. The story takes place in the mid 1970s in South Carolina. Gooding does a nice job with the role, too.
Note: It was interesting in one of the documentaries on this DVD to find out that, in real life, in took years for "Radio" to make his transformation, not months as shown in the film.
 Radio February 8, 2009
music appreciator
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The DVD was shipped promptly and arrived in excellent condition as advertised. As for the movie itself, I use it in a Social Group I run with special needs students as part of a disability awareness program. Very appropriate and highly recommended.
Based on a true story--serious tissue warning December 6, 2008
R. Kyle (USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"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 November 25, 2008
Karen K. Murphy
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 October 8, 2008
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
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
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