"Tell me about the rabbits, George"

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 2008)

I guess as I'm getting older, I'm finally learning what it means to be human. Perhaps on an emotional level -- emotional IQ is the buzzword today, right -- anyway, perhaps on an emotional level I've been as severely emotionally retarded as James Robert Kennedy was/is on an intellectual level.
I was flabbergasted by the movie "Radio." What stunned me most was its pure humanity. It hit me with its pure power the way John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" did. And the shocking thing, to me, was that even though I saw the movie version of that classic over 50 years ago . . . I never really got it . . . I never really got Steinbeck's message.
You see, all this time, I thought his book and the movie were about LOVE . . . and love, which is so damn important whether in all caps or in lower case, is still such a small and unimportant emotion compared to human dignity. That's the story of Radio and that's the story Of Mice and Men. And yes, talking about OM&M I did cry in the final scene when big Lennie so pathetically says, "Tell me about the rabbits, George." But until I saw the movie Radio even though I never would even think of doing a cruel thing to retarded individuals . . . I never really got Steinbeck's message and I never really understood about human dignity. I like the fact that Radio learned slowly, but that the town and the townspeople learned rapidly from him. And the one line where it's said " . . . he treats ALL of us ALL the time, like we wish people treated us half the time . . ." Radio was absolutely nothing like I expected and everything the best movies are.