The Blind Side

PLOT (spoiler alert!!!):

For most of his childhood, 17-year-old Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) has been in foster care with different families throughout Memphis, Tennessee. Every time he is placed in a new home, he runs away. His friend’s father, whose couch Mike had been sleeping on, asks Burt Cotton (Ray McKinnon), the coach of Wingate Christian school, to help enroll his son and Mike. Impressed by Mike’s size and athleticism, Cotton gets him admitted despite his abysmal academic record.

At his new school, Michael is befriended by a boy named Sean Jr. “SJ” (Jae Head). SJ’s mother Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) is a strong-minded interior designer and the wife of wealthy businessman Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw). After a late night Thanksgiving school play, Leigh Anne notices Michael walking on the road, shivering in the cold; when she learns he intends to spend the night huddled outside the school gym, she offers him a place to sleep at her house. The next morning, when she sees Michael leaving, she asks him to spend the holiday with her family. Slowly, Michael becomes a member of the Tuohy family, even as Leigh Anne’s rich friends wonder what she is doing. One even suggests that her teenage daughter Collins (Lily Collins) is not safe around him, much to Leigh Anne’s disgust.

When Leigh Anne seeks to become Michael’s legal guardian, she learns he was separated from his drug-addict mother when he was seven and that no one knows her whereabouts. She is also told that even though he scored low in almost every category, he is in the 98th percentile in “protective instincts”.

After his grades improve, Michael is allowed to join the school football team. He has a shaky start due to his polite and gentle nature, yet after some encouragement by Leigh Anne to tap into his “protective instincts” and regard his teammates as he would members of his family, Michael dominates on the field. SJ sends out videos of the games to college coaches around the country. Leigh Anne discovers that to get a NCAA Division I scholarship, Michael needs a 2.5 GPA, so they hire a tutor, Miss Sue (Kathy Bates). Some of the teachers help out as well, and Michael ends up with a GPA of 2.52.

When coaches come to recruit Michael, Leigh Anne makes it clear that she prefers the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) as both she and her husband are alumni. Miss Sue, another Ole Miss alumna, tells Michael (who dislikes horror films) that the FBI buries body parts under the University of Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium for research; Leigh Anne particularly loathes that school. Michael commits to Ole Miss.

Subsequently, Michael and the Tuohys become the subject of an NCAA investigation. The investigator tells Michael that the Tuohys and Miss Sue are fervent Mississippi boosters, who are subject to special restrictions, and his high school coach got a job at Ole Miss after Michael chose the school. Michael confronts Leigh Anne, asking her if she only took him in so he would play football for her alma mater. Michael then goes to his birth mother’s apartment in the projects. His old friends welcome him, but their leader makes crude remarks about Leigh Anne and Collins. In the ensuing fight, Michael dispatches three thugs and then flees the scene.

Leigh Anne searches for Michael. He finally calls her, and they meet. Leigh Anne tells him she will support any decision he makes. Michael satisfies the investigator by explaining that he chose Ole Miss because his whole family has gone there.

Later, Leigh Ann and her family take Michael to the Ole Miss campus to begin college. The film ends with an emotional goodbye between Leigh Anne and Michael. The closing credits show the 2009 NFL Draft with the real Michael Oher being drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round. Photographs of Oher and the real Tuohys follow, with Oher’s success in the NFL detailed. The credits include a dedication to director John Lee Hancock’s father, a football player and coach who died in 2009.

REVIEW:

This film has been called a non-football football movie. I didn’t even think that was possible, really, but apparently The Blind Side does just that.

This film is the life story of Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Michael Oher and how he was adopted by the Tuohy family, started playing football, and eventually made it to the NFL.

Initially, I thought this was just going to be another one of those boring dramas, just with a football theme. Thankfully, that isn’t what this turned out to be. Much in the same way I was shocked by how interesting Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire turned out to be surprisingly interesting, this film followed the same pattern and made me wish I had actually given it a chance back when everyone was all gaga over it.

As with all biopics, the thing that has me the most curious, is how much of this really happened, and how much was done just to make an “interesting” film. For instance, there is a scene during one of the few football games they show that Big Mike picks up a linebacker and takes him all the way across the field, dumps him over the rail, and gets asked by his coach where he was taking him, to which he replies that he was taking him to the bus and that it was time to go home.

It is little inserts of humor that keep this from being the total snorefest that one would expect from a drama, though.

The acting here is really great, of course almost all of the cast is actually from the south, so those accents weren’t too much of a stretch, save for having to adjust to Tennessee twang.

Sandra Bullock did such a great job in this role that she won an Oscar for it. Do I really need to say more?

Tim McGraw has really come into his own as an actor over the years. While he doesn’t have much to do here, the few scene he is in are pretty good.

Quinton Aaron had the intimidating task of being Big Mike and I think he did a good job of it. He didn’t do the gy any injustice. You have to wonder, though, how mch pressure was on this guy to play someone who is still alive and in the prime of their life. Oher is currently playing in the NFL. Normally, biopics are made of people who are dead or up there in age. I say this and just remembered that there was some kind of movie about Prince William and Kate Middelton on last night.

I do have a slight issue with the casting, though, and that is when they show what the Tuohys during the credits, they are nowhere near as attractive a couple as Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw. I know that they were cast for box office draw, well…Bullock was, but you’d think they’d have found someone who resembled these people more. They had no problem finding some fugly woman to play Michael’s mom. I’m just saying.

Each year, I come across a drama that makes me sit up and take notice, it seems like. I guess this year’s version is The Blind Side. I thoroughly enjoyed this film, in spite of its lack of football. I highly recommend this to any and everyone. It truly lives up to the hype!

5 out of 5 stars

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