A typical feel-good movie with practically no conflict.

Rating: 4/10 (8 December 2009)

"The Blind Side" is a typical "feel good" movie with moderately strong religious overtones and very little conflict. There is so little conflict, in fact, that it's hard for the abundance of warm, happy moments to have very much effect. In short, the movie to come off as cheesy and insignificant.
"The Blind Side" opens with the climax of the movie, which is probably the moment with the most conflict; the only one to piqué my interest to any degree. The opening is vague and makes things seem much more serious than they really are. Then the movie flashes back to the beginning of the story it has to tell.
Michael Oher is a bastard son, born to a crack-addicted mother, living with the father of his friend. He sleeps on the couch and has never had a bed to himself. Sounds tragic, but don't expect the filmmakers to really show you this. Michael's caretaker is a mechanic and convinces a Christian private school to accept Michael and his son into the school. He talks to the coach and convinces him to push for Michael's acceptance based on a one on one game of basketball that he was playing with the mechanic's son. And for some reason this game convinced the coach that Michael would be good for the football team. I never got that.
After this no more is really heard of the mechanic or his son. The son gets accepted but not even Michael is seen socializing with him. They both just disappear. This is so that Michael Oher seems to be the only black student at the school, but it left me with a lot of questions.
Michael's crack-head mother lives in a ghetto run by gangs in middle Tennessee. Very little is shown of this ghetto and the gang and of Michael's mother. These were some of the moments where there was a lot of potential for strong and meaningful content but everything was glossed over. There could not have been four or five scenes in the ghetto and all of them were less than 5 minutes in length. The focus if the entire movie was the warm happy-go-lucky family moments where the good-Christian white family accepts a poor, uneducated black kid into their home and as a member of the family. Why should I care about this un-dynamic and trite situation. Even if it is based on a true story, it's all been seen before.
The acting ranged from terrible to mediocre to decent. The worst was Sandra Bullock's son and the best was her husband (sorry I'm terrible with names) who felt the most natural. The film focused on Sandra Bullock, but I wasn't convinced by her character as a southern, high-energy republican. The actor who played Michael Oher was flat, but at least it was hard to tell because he had very few lines.
The Christian over-tones at the start of the film urged the most resistance from me, but I realized that just because I'm atheist, does not mean the director and writers are too and eventually grew used to it, even though I'll still always find it cheesy.
I could have liked this movie, if it was more dynamic, but this lacking element caused the story telling to be weak and left little room for any of the actors to shine. It was "meh".