Movie Review - The Blind Side

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How can you tell The Blind Side is based on a true story?  For starters, the main characters are kind and compassionate Republicans.  In their wildest imagination, Hollywood could never come up with a concept like that.  Telling the story of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), the film follows him from his poverty stricken teenage years to his being drafted into the NFL.  Knowing that the inspirational tone of the film will undoubtedly attract many non-football fans, the movie opens with a nice tutorial on the sport and deftly explains the importance of the position of Left Tackle.  Given that most football movies focus on the Quarterback, it’s a wise move.  As the film starts, the upscale Briarcrest Christian School begrudgingly accepts the gargantuan Oher into their ranks.  He’s essentially homeless and has virtually no vital records due the poor parenting of his crack addicted mother.  But they accept him in spite of this; a frothy mixture of Christian values and a vision of the ghost of championships-yet-to-come filling their heads. 

 Oher is utterly adrift at his new school.  The victim of his previous school’s practice of social promotion, he has no concept of how do to schoolwork.  The administration doesn’t realize that Oher is essentially homeless; scavenging for discarded bags of half-eaten popcorn after school events and spending the night in 24-hour laundromats when he can’t find a stray couch to crash on.  Following one of those events, Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) sees Oher walking aimlessly in the cold.  He’s wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirt, the same outfit he’s always wearing and the only one he owns.  Sensing something is amiss; Leigh Anne has her husband Sean (Tim McGraw) pullover and pick him up.  The Touhys are wealthy, owning upwards of 75 fast-food restaurants, and immediately take him into their home.  There is initially trepidation as they wonder what a child of his background might do unsupervised.  But they quickly realize that Oher is not only a gentle giant, but a protective one. 

It would be easy to mock The Blind Side as a manipulative tearjerker full of self-congratulatory White folks.  And I had every intention of doing just that but something unexpected happened – it’s actually kind of um, well…good.  In lesser hands it could have easily turned into a treacly mess; a sort of Rudy meets Diff’rent Strokes.  But Writer/director John Lee Hancock actually shows remarkable restraint throughout the film.  Sure, Bullock looks like a made-for-TV Erin Brokovich and it’s a showy role, to be sure.  And Bullock gets her chance to puff-up with self-righteous indignation.  But it is so much more than that.  It’s interesting in the film doesn’t feel the need to create a villain.  There are certainly some characters that are insensitive but they come across not so much “racist” as they do “jaded”; quick to assume that someone from Oher’s Dickensian background would need more than a little elbow grease in order to turn things around.

While it is another story about saintly White people helping out a downtrodden minority, the film is aided by the fact that it’s a true story.  If not, Oher’s depiction as a somewhat asexual puppy-dog would be a more troubling.  His character remains something of a nonentity for much of the film due to his seldom speaking.  Perplexed by both the wealth and hospitality of the Touhys, he spends much of the film holding his tongue while waiting for the other shoe to drop.  His relationship with the Touhy's attractive teenage daughter (Lily Collins) never becomes anything more than sibling-like; a development that would seem more akin to condescending wish-fulfillment if it weren’t apparently substantiated by actual family photos over the end-credits. 

The Blind Side is a crowd-pleaser of the highest order.  The film is conventional but manages to wring new life out of an old story (even if this particular variation is true and recent).  Sports movies are notorious for hinging on that final drive, at-bat, free-throw, etc.  But the last act of this film surprisingly doesn’t focus on Oher’s on-field achievements but rather his off-field ones.  His football acumen has made an SEC Conference scholarship a foregone conclusion.  However, his grades need improvement per NCAA guidelines.  The climactic montage of the film isn’t a sports hero training but a sports hero studying; the lingering shot of victory isn’t of Oher scoring a touchdown but of accepting his diploma.  And it’s hard not to root for a sports movie with such a unique and virtually unprecedented message.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Rudy and 1 being Johnny Be Good, The Blind Side gets an 8.

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