The Blind Side

Thursday, January 14th, 2010, 10:45 am

As I tweeted this morning, I liked The Blind Side more than I thought I would. It's not a great movie by any means, and I thought the third act was weak (the fight at the drug dealer's house? Really?), but overall, as bad sports movies / bad "based on a true story" uplifting movies go, it wasn't actually, well, bad.

As someone who read Michael Lewis's book, the places where I thought the movie went most off the rails were the liberties the film took with what actually happened (or at least with what Lewis reported). The aforementioned fight (leading to Sandra Bullock's ludicrous threat to the drug dealer the next morning, a scene used in every single commercial for the movie) was one. The bigger issue I have in re: liberties is that the movie paints the Tuohy family in a much more positive light than the book in one key respect: their motivations for adopting Michael Oher. Sean Tuohy, you'll recall, saw Michael, this enormous young man, playing basketball and noticed that he wasn't just big, he was an athlete too. Thus the seed is planted: when the family ends up taking him in, what percentage of their charity is pure and Christian and what percentage is motivated by their love of Ole Miss? The film doesn't show Sean knowing anything about Michael's athletic ability. Thus the later accusation by the NCAA compliance officer, that the Tuohys had improper motivations and violated recruiting rules, doesn't land with the force it needs. All we're shown is what's finally concluded: that they treated him like a son of their own and thus naturally pushed him toward the school they went to, but "he's our son" came clearly before "he's our left tackle".

That's obviously a pretty big hole chopped right out of the story, especially since the filmmakers actually did want to go there. It's not like they simply wanted to tell Michael's uplifting story and leave all the moral quandaries of football-based motivations alone. They wanted the movie to address both issues. Thus, by slanting the story so far in the direction of purity, a part of the movie simply fails.

But like I said, I liked it anyway. The cheesy training montage (you've seen sports movies before) was amusing as S.J., the small son, puts Michael through his workouts. Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher was touching and, I thought, got a key point right: Michael is no dummy. Pulling off the "refuses to talk and has been utterly failed in terms of schooling" without just seeming mentally retarded is hard, but I think the screenplay, direction, and Aaron's acting did a nice job with this. (Although I could have done with one or two fewer expository "he's no dummy" comments. But I've started to accept that Hollywood just isn't one for subtlety.)

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