Watchable, but a little lacking

Rating: 5/10 (21 March 2020)

Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) lives in the ghetto and has never known his father and has been living with his mother who is a drug addict. Michael is poorly educated and he finds himself at rock bottom until one day when wealthy family the Tuohys take Michael in and help him turn his life around and help him achieve his ultimate ambition and become an all American football player...
Whilst there's no denying that the story behind Michael Oher's journey is inspiring and the Tuohy's assistance in helping achieve his goal is honourable it's actually the way everything is presented here which I took issue with...
For a start I found a lot of things happened very conveniently; Michael agreeing to stay with the rich white family without much in the way of resistance. The family (more particularly the kids) being so readily accepting of someone so different to themselves without so much as batting an eyelid. I agree that this is the way someone from a different social background should be accepted, but given the fact that Michael was one of the only 'black' kids in the school it seemed very strange how 'nice' everyone was with Michael at the start given how practically everyone else showed prejudice towards him.
The convenience and simplistic nature of the narrative doesn't end there either though; once Michael starts his home-tutoring and starts to train as an American football player I just found that everything came together far too easily meaning that I never once felt that I was watching an individual actually progressing. This caused a problem for me as I really wanted to feel a sense of struggle for Michael; I'm aware that the Blind Side is based on a true story and has been adapted from a book so I'm not sure how accurate a reflection this is of Michael's journey, but I really struggled with how simplistically this film was presented as whole. For me I found the film slightly lacking from an emotional perspective which unfortunately meant that I couldn't enjoy the film as much as I'd have hoped.
The acting is OK with Quintin Aaron being quite good in some scenes, but unfortunately most of what is asked of him is surly silences and long stares. Sandra Bullock is good and gives a fairly passionate performance and did a good job in making me believe that she genuinely cared. Tim McGraw is not given much to do and Lily Collins felt more like window-dressing (she's very pretty though which was a plus at least). As the son Joe Head was the 'fun' character and his scenes where he effectively becomes Michael's broker when Michael starts to get 'head-hunted' were amusing.
The Blind Side is watchable in the sense that it moves along without ever really being boring, but at the same time I just didn't find it to be a particularly emotionally involving film due to the convenient and simplistic way that the whole film was presented which meant that it didn't quite resonate with me in the same way that other sports drama films have done.