Oh Mommy, please can we keep him!

Rating: 4/10 (14 December 2010)

I've discovered that you certainly don't have to be black to be offended and insulted by the candy-coated fable "The Blind Side". As I watched I couldn't help but be reminded of "Harry And The Hendersons", but with a decidedly racist slant, although in the movie's defense, I don't feel it was deliberate. All the same, this feel-good movie is the type of Hollywood production that blacks have justifiably railed against since "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", and rightfully so.
Here we have a privileged pretty princess (Bullock) and her pretty McMansion-ensconced family bestowing not just aid but outright salvation itself on a poor and essentially homeless black "child". Aside from some blips generated by the skeptical raised eyebrows of the NCAA, all the future is happiness for everyone involved....The End. I freely admit I possess a low threshold for "cute", and the family's precocious wise-beyond-his-years young son seemed to single-handedly tip this film into the Oh-Give-Me-A-Break ditch. He seemed to be a character lifted out of a laugh-tracked cookie-cutter '80's family sitcom. Is this how far we've come? AND...What is the wonderful Kathy Bates doing in this film??
There were also a few peripheral yet potent loose strings for which resolutions were never presented (the central character's drug-addicted mother and estranged brother, for example). We get to meet them, or at least become aware of them. But it seems the message we're left to assume is that, since they don't have their own Nice White Lady to rescue them, they don't have any real chance at redemption, so there's really no point in hearing from them again. Feel-good movies never leave such untidiness! Since "The Blind Side" is based on true events, the real-life people these actors endeavor to portray deserve better that this icky sweet confection.