 January
2004
This month's review:
Two Heart-Warmers for the Season
Have you ever had a lit course in which the teacher told you that
sentimentality is bad? A lot of academicians call sentiment a false
emotion because it’s overly emotional or unsophisticated.
Balderdash, I say. There are times when it’s good, even necessary,
to feel sentimental. Works don’t have to be stark, cynical, or
“profound” to be worthwhile. Often a simple, heartwarming story
uplifts us and edifies us. So it is with movies, especially at
Christmastime. Two recent heart-warmers fall into this category.
Radio
The first is Radio, starring Cuba Gooding as a
mildly retarded teenage black youth in 1970s South Carolina and Ed
Harris as the high school football coach who befriends him. At the
beginning of the story, young James Robert Kennedy pushes a grocery
cart (the analogue of a bag lady’s bag, where he keeps the objects
he collects) around the town of Anderson, having no real friends and
talking to no one. He begins hanging around the high school, and
pretty soon some of the members of the football team capture him and
cruelly tie him up with tape and rope. Learning of this, the coach
is outraged. He punishes the perpetrators and befriends James, who
is soon nicknamed “Radio” because he always has one with him.
Gradually, Radio is accepted by the team members and becomes a
beloved fixture around the high school, though not without
opposition from villainous types in the town.
We might at first think this is going to be a story of racial
discrimination, but there’s more to it than that. Radio’s black
complexion figures into his problems at some level, but the real
discrimination here is against his slowness and “not-with-it”
demeanor. The football team has plenty of strong, impressive black
players who are seen as valuable because they help to win games. The
coach responds to Radio’s problem, partly to make up for a wrong in
his own past. In so doing, he exemplifies Jesus’ statement:
“Whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did
for me.”
Radio has a predictable, almost formulaic story,
but it’s right on the money thematically. Besides its kindness
theme, it also makes the point that, as Christians, it’s easy for us
to become involved in a “project” (Radio is the coach’s project)
while neglecting our own family members. Ed Harris plays the role of
the coach with great feeling and skill, and Cuba Gooding gives a
spectacular performance as Radio.
Rating: 2 ¾
stars
Second-Hand Lions
The other heart-warmer is Second-Hand Lions, for my
money the most original and most entertaining movie of 2003. Haley
Joel Osment (of Sixth Sense and Pay It Forward)
plays Walter, a young teen whose flaky, man-chasing mother leaves
him in Texas with two eccentric great-uncles to head for the bright
lights of Las Vegas. The uncles, played by Robert Duvall and Michael
Caine, live on a large farm with many pet animals and all kinds of
quirky signs intended to discourage visitors: GO BACK NOW! EXTREME
RADIATION DANGER. YOU WILL BE SHOT, etc. The uncles don’t take
kindly to Walter’s arrival at first, but they warm up to him as time
passes.
Second-Hand Lions is about love, underlyingly, but
it’s also about our need to pay attention to others and truly listen
to them. Walter’s mother obviously doesn’t give him the attention he
needs or listen to his concerns. In sharp contrast, as the uncles
and Walter get acquainted, they learn first to appreciate and
eventually to love each other. Much of the movie is taken up with
the uncles’ telling stories about the exploits of their fabulous
past, with Walter all ears, and the dramatizing of these stories. In
Second-Hand Lions, the importance of “story” as a key
element of life is emphasized, as is the notion that every action we
take is important.
Osment, Duvall, and Caine give excellent performances, and there
are enough plot twists and turns to keep even the most jaded viewer
engrossed. By the way, in case you’re wondering what the title
means, let me just say that it’s both literal and symbolic.
Rating: 3 ½
stars
I heard no taking in vain of the Lord’s name in either
Radio or Second-Hand Lions, though I did hear
an occasional four-letter word. Potential viewers need to be aware
of that. Still, it’s hard to go wrong on these two.
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Index of movie
reviews...
(2003 reviews through present)
Jay Maurer, a member of West Side Presbyterian Church, is
a long-term movie buff and former college teacher of The Film as
Literature. He has written movie reviews for The Good News
(West Side newsletter) since 2002.
If you have comments or questions
about the movie (or play) reviews, please contact Jay at
dramachap@msn.com.
Ratings are expressed in
increments of ¼ star.
A rating of 2 ½ stars or higher is meant to be a recommendation.
1 star: poor
2 stars: minimally satisfactory
3 stars: quite good
4 stars: superb
Criteria for determining the ratings:
- Reflection, either explicit or implicit, of Christian values,
including suitability of language and lack of gratuitous violence
- Quality of the acting
- Originality
- Unity of the entire picture
- Substance, or in the words of C.S. Lewis, weight
Other Christian movie review Web sites:
Plugged In Online
ChristianityTodayMovies.com
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