I blame it all on that gay boat movie. Cuba Gooding, Jr. had a lot going for him, an Academy Award for Jerry McGuire, sharing screen time with big timers like Robert DiNero, and then, boom, he makes a movie about accidentally going on a gay cruise and his whole career goes in the shitter. After that he jams in fake teeth to play a retarded equipment manager for a high school football team in Radio and moves farther down the food chain in junk like Norbit. After each misstep, I cringe and wish the charismatic actor would find his stride.
It’s unlikely he will find said stride in Harold. The Hollywood Reporter says that Gooding will play a janitor at a high school. He befriends the title character, a new kid undergoing teasing because he is prematurely bald. If this sounds like a bad “Saturday Night Live” skit, the writers are former SNL writers T. Sean Shannon and Greg Fields. Shannon will make his directorial debut.
Morris Levy, one of the producers, says about the movie, “It's in the vein of 'Napoleon Dynamite.'” Unfortunately, saying it doesn’t always make it so, and even if it is in that vein, it still needs to be good. Based on Gooding’s ability to pick scripts, I wouldn’t bet it will be.
