‘Radio’
Directed by Mike Tollin
Starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Ed Harris
Columbia
Rated PG
120 mins.

Grade: D-

It’s part of the job of a movie critic to offer counseling for stars in need of guidance, and no one needs it more right now than Cuba Gooding Jr.

The actor who became a star after his jubilant acceptance speech for his “Jerry Maguire” Oscar has exhibited the kind of taste in scripts that would make John Travolta jealous. Hopefully, Gooding was shown the money – and lots of it – because his post-“Maguire” output leaves a lot to be desired.

These past two years have been especially hard for Gooding, who has been hitting rock bottom over and over (“Snow Dogs,” “Boat Trip,” “The Fighting Temptations” – it doesn’t get any worse than that), and whose career is hanging on by the last thread of audience good will. He’s not doing himself any favors, either, by starring in “Radio,” a smarmy, sleazy bit of hackwork that brings the entire inspirational-drama genre down to its nadir.

This maudlin garbage claims that it is inspired by a true story -“claims” because the movie is as fraudulent and manipulative as they come. It tugs on heartstrings so hard it pulls them out. It’s filled with the kind of vacuous dime-store profundities that even Hallmark would reject. And everything else about the movie – from the honey-glazed cinematography to James Horner’s overbearing, neon-highlighter score – is sugary enough to cause diabetes.

Everything besides Gooding’s performance, that is. The actor is surprisingly back to form – that is, he’s back to acting instead of mugging hyperactively. He plays James Robert Kennedy Jr., a mentally impaired young man with a love of radios, who quickly comes to be a beloved figure in his town.

Gooding walks with an awkward, stoop-shouldered gait and talks in the half-formed gurgle of an excited child, but he honors the real man by refusing to condescend to his character. Gooding captures the heart beating beneath the movie’s noble lie.

Gooding’s performance is so good, actually, that it just manages to illustrate the general worthlessness of the rest of the movie. “Radio” jerks tears with such force that it constitutes abuse. It should be illegal to release such emotionally manipulative swill to the marketplace.

Kennedy was befriended by Howard Jones (here, played by a bored-looking Ed Harris), the popular athletic director and football coach of the local high school, who more or less becomes the team’s happy-go-lucky mascot.

“Radio” treats its title character as a totem – as a symbol for acceptance and as a symbol for the noble heroism of Coach Jones for befriending this kid. The movie only pays a tiny bit of lip service to Kennedy’s condition: “He’s just like everybody else,” says his mother, “just a little bit slower.” That’s as deep as the movie gets.

Despite the fact that the movie is set in South Carolina in 1976, the film sidesteps the issue of race completely. Kennedy is black and so is the high school principal, but no mention is made of the fact that both are African-American in a time when the civil rights movement is roiling across the lands. The movie’s measured attempts to avoid any matters of confrontation, its desire to airbrush anything that may be construed as troubling, is more galling than the movie’s bankrupt sentimentality.

Harris drains as much of the schmaltz away from his character as he can, and Gooding is back to being good again. But both of them are drowned in a tidal wave of goopy, sticky syrup. “Radio” is the kind of movie that’s billed as “inoffensive” and “inspirational” so that you look like a cynical, heartless SOB for denouncing it. I hate to spoil it for Hollywood, it’s neither cynical nor heartless to dismiss such displays of unearned emotion. In fact, this kind of arrogant, sugary tripe is what’s most offensive.