Blindness

Rating: 5/10 (10 February 2010)

Boy, The Blind Side tried. It really did attempt to be a tear jerker.
If it weren't for an interview I heard/saw from the real-life Michael Oher (played here by Aaron) who said barely a scene actually happened – stating most were for, well, dramatic effect, it still would fail at being 100% interesting.
Oher's homeless after his druggie mother (of, like 15 kids she may/may not remember giving birth to) doesn't want anything to do with him, as are the other caretakers, he runs into stuck-up rich wife gal Leigh Anne (Bullock) and she takes him in. Showing she's not perfect, even she admits the first night, she worries a person of color will steal from (or harm) her family. Guess what? Oher ends up being someone decent, albeit reclusive and attaches himself to the rich family's kindness.
Eventually he opens up, feels more safe and proves that football's his thing. So much, that the coincidentally ex-cheerleader mom encourages him further and then into a college scholarship. Throw in some outrageously Lifetime drama of a conflict on which school he chooses and you'll get the "exciting" climax of him making it big on his own terms.
These all sound like complaints. And they're really not. This movie wasn't bad, per se, but not great. It tried too hard, way too hard for tears of the audience. I'll admit: it nearly got me in a few scenes.
Unfortunately, before I could fully get emotional, the movie shifts gears and I'm back to watching a movie that should have, in fact, ended on the Lifetime Channel verses the big screen.
The more I heard about Bullock's performance – Oscar worthy, they say, I had to see this movie. She was really good, I will say. The best? No. Great, even? Again, no. But really good. I believed every scene she was in as mother-of-the-week Leigh Anne Touhy. Was this her best performance? Or the best she could be? By no means, that's a negative. Heck, not only was she better in Speed, her absolute best job was in 2005's Crash, in which, she wasn't even nominated. Like Pacino, who onlyONLY for the love of Petewon an Oscar for one role (Scent of a Woman), Bullock will probably be recognized for The Blind Side, despite her being so much better in Crash. It's those old Oscar cronies way of making up for past mistakes, as they generally do.
Was the movie worth watching? Sure. For the (waaay over used) great (based on, inspired by, etc) true FOOTBALL movies? Not really. If you're looking for that, look elsewhere. And having literally hundreds of the "true" football films come out in the past two+ decades, it shouldn't be hard to find. This one has basically one real football game scene and a few practices. It's more about overcoming prejudices, charity, the 'hood and, of course, Bullock's Oscar chances. See it, if everything else is sold out.
SIDE NOTE: Like many other "TRUE STORIES" that use a tremendous amount of unrealistic but dramatic scenes that, for the most part, are entered in to move the story along to fit in years of lives in mere hours, The Blind Side hit a nerve with me. In one of the key plot points, the young boy of the Touhy family (Head) films all of Oher's football practices and games. He eventually sends a copy to the recruiter's office and from there, every single, and I mean EVERYONE of the, recruiting colleges/universities want this rather large soon-to-be football player. Here's my petpeeve: Though I know, once again, these types of movies thrive on the heavy drama (to make us weep!) and have to get the job done in under 3 hours (short attention span, audience, eh?) they cut corners with extreme amateur videos (the boy was about 10) that are professionally made. For example, he's completely stationary yet, the film follows the action on the field, namely Oher. Not only did this type of filming never occur, it was extremely hard to buy the recruiters sitting back, laughing, high-fiving their way to dollar-signs in their eyes due to the "excellent footage" they're witnessing on their monitors. Give me a freaking break.