If for nothing else, see it for the big-screen debut of Sarah Drew.

Rating: 4/10 (17 November 2003)

Ed Harris stars as high school football coach Harold Jones, who takes in a mentally retarded African-American man, who probably missed out on school back when the south was segregated, even though it wouldn't have made a difference in his case. His daughter is played by Sarah Drew, and until now there were two kinds of people who knew who she is: Recent theater buffs and Daria fans who know her as the voice of Stacy Rowe. Like a certain IMDB user from North Carolina, I saw it strictly for that reason. The movie is unfortunately predictable, but not necessarily intolerable. Cuba Gooding Jr. doesn't overplay James Robert "Radio" Kennedy the way you'd expect an actor to do in such a role. His gullibility in the face of high school pranks is easily expected, and just as painful to watch. There's no mention of how his father died, so unless you actually read the Sports Illustrated article this movie is based on(which I didn't), you can only guess that since it takes place in South Carolina, he might've been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. Harris' speech to Drew on why he's the kind of person who helps the unfortunate is also mumbled. I'm going to have to use the closed captioning device when I rent it on DVD. I also wonder if Debra Winger(Coach Jones' wife) coached Cuba Gooding Jr. in playing retarded people since she did so in 1993's "A Dangerous Woman," even though I have nothing to base this assumption on. Still, it's no "Forrest Gump," but at least it's not as appalling as having to sit through Juliette Lewis in "The Other Sister."