It will reaffirm your faith in humanity. Seriously.

Rating: 9/10 (7 September 2010)

The Blind Side is fairly unusual for an entertaining film in that it succeeds as much for what it doesn't do as for what it does. This movie could have become something truly, insultingly, patronizingly offensive. Instead, it became a wonderful tale of love and human decency.
Based on a true story, it's about Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), a gigantic and homeless black teenager who gets taken in by a rich white family, the Tuohy's, who turn his life around and help him become a great football player. Imagine what the old sitcom Different Strokes would have been like if little Arnold (Gary Coleman) had been 6'5'', 300 pounds and stoic and that's the basic idea of The Blind Side. Michael Oher is a good young man who is lifted out of a world of abandonment, poverty and crime. First because a football coach at a expensive private school wants Oher for the team and then because the wealthy Tuohy family opens their home and hearts to him.
The primary angel in Oher's life is steely Southern belle Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock), who brings him into her family. In the beginning, it's almost like Oher is a stray dog that Leigh Anne is taking pity on. She doesn't think through any of the consequences of what she's doing or where it's going to lead. Leigh Anne just sees someone in need and tries to help, never expecting it to result in her gaining a new, black and enormous son. Bullock is great here. It might be the best performance she's ever given or ever will give.
Tim McGraw is also very good as Leigh Anne's husband. He's a little more practical about letting Oher into their lives, but knows he can't dissuade his fierce wife when she sets her mind on something. Quinton Aaron as Michael Oher also shines in a deceptively difficult role. Stumbling out of a world of emotional trauma, Oher is not at all an expressive or dynamic character. Quite realistically, he's impassive and somewhat willfully blank to the terrible things that have happened to him. Aaron manages to make him a genuine person and not a bad knock off of Lennie from "Of Mice and Men".
The plot is very predictable but just manages to not insult the audience's intelligence. There's both some funny and poignant dialog and the direction has a very nice pace that neither hurries nor drags. Writer/director John Lee Hancock has taken a touching true story and made a touching motion picture out of it.
However, whether it's based on real life or not, having a young black man essentially rescued from the horrors of the black underclass by some rich white folks raises a lot of uncomfortable questions. Questions about race. Questions about economics. Questions about education, opportunity, white guilt, black cultural dysfunction and the list goes on and on and on. It would have been extraordinarily easy for The Blind Side to be unwatchably smarmy, condescending, preachy, manipulative and squirmingly fake. It avoids any of that by avoiding asking any of those uncomfortable questions. Viewing this film will remind you such questions exist, but it neither offers any answers nor asks the audience to come up with any. This movie isn't trying to make any broader social point. It's just tells us about a time when some good people did the right thing because it was the right thing to do and it all worked out incredibly well.
I liked The Blind Side a great deal and my mom liked it even more than I did. It'll make you glad you're a member of the human race, which is a pretty amazing thing.