FOURTHOUGHT

BEST ONSCREEN PERFORMANCE BY A RADIO
Sure, radios appear on screen all the time, usually to plug the film's soundtrack. However, there are instances in which a radio becomes more than a magic box full of tubes and wires. The following films are examples of the radio becoming a significant character, revealing crucial plot points and expanding on the narrative.

Hotel Rwanda (2004) – Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was the sole news source during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. The RTLM not only helps set the tone of the film with its lugubrious voiceovers - We will squash the infestation. We will wipe out the RPF rebels. This is RTLM, Hutu power radio. Stay alert. Watch your neighbors - the radio gives viewers insight into the Hutu/Tutsis conflict. It becomes the catalyst for a raid on a UN truck full of refugees, signaling the start of the third act, and directly affects the lives of every single character.


Frequency (2000) – Father/son relationships are complicated enough without having to involve an amateur radio that transmits 30 years into the past. Frequency is a lot like the story of Aladdin, sans the Arabian Desert and the parrot that sounds a lot like Gilbert Gottfried. The radio acts like a genie, granting John Sullivan (James Caviezel) his wishes. Accordingly, things are allowed to go horribly wrong before the radio provides Sullivan and his father (Dennis Quaid) a means of correcting it all. The touching moral about accepting the things we can not change and learning to let go are kicked aside. The Sullivan family uses the radio to screw with the space-time-continuum, and as a reward they are given all that they have wished for.


Say Anything (1989) – It is more than one of the most subtle and romantic gestures ever put on film. The song blaring through Lloyd Dobler’s boom-box perfectly conveys his feelings for Diane Court in a way that cheesy teen movie dialogue couldn’t. Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” is played twice, the first time on a car radio during a very significant moment in the relationship of the lead characters -THEY DO IT! The song comes back like a refrain, spilling from the speakers perched atop Dobler’s outstretched arms, filling the void between him and the woman he loves.

Radio (2003) – True, in this instance a radio isn’t really a device that wirelessly transmits through space of electromagnetic waves as much it is the nickname of a mentally challenged black kid from Anderson, South Carolina. Cuba Gooding Jr. takes on one of his most challenging roles ever, and fails miserably, approaching the character with all the overacting you’d expect from a guy too desperate to prove his 1997 Oscar win wasn’t a freak accident. Over the course of the film Radio, named for his impressive radio collection, manages to bring out the best and worst in everyone around him. He pushes his fellow characters, motivating them and becoming the mascot of a football team that once considered him a nuisance. However, it is often hard to take the film seriously, and not just because of Gooding’s ridiculous prosthetic teeth. Ed Harris as Coach Jones is totally unconvincing and Michael Tollin’s crappy direction makes the film so overblown with useless sentiment it feels like a Lifetime made for TV movie.