I remember the days when Ed Harris only took on respectable roles. Not so anymore, it would seem. After bringing down the house last year in The Hours, Haris has now taken on a flat role in an even flatter story in Radio.

Radio, which is void of any real plot, is an episodic string of events dealing with the relationship between Coach Jones (Ed Harris), a high school football coach, and a mentally handicapped man (Cuba Gooding Jr.) affectionately nicknamed Radio because of his love of radios.

To summarize the film in one line: Coach Jones befriends Radio and makes him part of the “team”. Because Radio spends most of his time walking alone around the streets, Coach Jones wants to bring something into his life through the high school. He gives him something to do to help out in football practice and puts him on the sidelines with the team during the game. As a faculty member, Jones also tries to teach Radio how to read and to participate in classes.

Along the way, various obstacles arise that would hinder Radio’s acceptance. Boys on the team treat Radio cruelly, members of the community think he’s a danger to the sports program, school board members think Radio’s a danger to other students and the coach’s time spent with Radio pulls him away from his family.

None of these obstacles, however, are sufficiently developed or sufficiently resolved. They are all simply slapped on there to elicit sympathy for Radio. For example, the primary community member who is opposed to Radio’s participation on the team never provides any evidence for his complaints. Absolutely one dimensional, he’s just another contrived convention created purely to pour syrup on this already artificially sweet story.

Just as empty as the peripheral characters are both of the primary characters, neither of which change or are developed in any meaningful way. Radio is screenwriting at its very worst.

Cuba Gooding is competent enough as Radio, but he’s not nearly as convincing or endearing as both Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn were in similar roles. Nothing else about the film work is anything that rises above the least of mediocrity.

To make things worse, the films final moments introduce us to the real Radio of present day, with the implicit claim that we’re supposed to appreciate the previous two hours of crap because it’s a “true story”. Though it genuinely attempts to show a simple story about love, the only thing it really gets across is that even artificial sweeteners can taste bland.

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