 "Photo: Warner Bros.")
“The Blind Side” follows in a long line of inspirational sports-related movies that are really about a lot more than just sports. You know the ones. Many of them are based-on-a-true-story, feel-good dramatizations. They have titles like “The Rookie”, “Remember the Titans”, “The Express: The Ernie Davis Story” and “Glory Road”. They endearingly draw non-sports fans into their stories precisely because they deal with issues larger than sports. They are human interest stories.
And so, although “The Blind Side” is the story of NFL rookie Michael Oher, the movie appeals to a much wider audience than just the world of football fandom. Sandra Bullock and country musician Tim McGraw lead the charge as Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy. The Tuohys are a very well-to-do, Southern couple who have two kids enrolled in a private Christian school. Mr. Tuohy is a fast-food restaurant owner. To be more precise, he owns over 80 Taco Bell, KFC, and Long John Silver restaurants. Mrs. Touhy is an interior decorator.
The Tuohys’ lives are changed when they meet “Big Mike”. Michael Oher (played by newbie Quinton Aaron) is a tall and burly teen from the mean projects of Memphis, Tennessee. Oher’s mom is a crack addict and he’s been alienated from his father. He’s been in and out of foster care and finds himself homeless through much of high school. When a friend he’s staying with tries to enroll him into the Christian school where the Tuohy kids attend, he just barely makes it into the school after the football coach pleads with the headmaster to remember the school’s Christian ethos.
The Tuohys encounter Michael one night walking on the side of the road in a t-shirt and shorts. Leigh Anne tells her husband to stop the car, and like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable, offers the young man a place to stay for the night. Actually, she insists, in her own kind-hearted and stubborn way, that he stay the night. One night turns into several nights, and several nights into weeks. Michael becomes part of the Tuohy clan. The Tuohys hire a tutor named Miss Sue (played by Kathy Bates) to help bring his GPA up so he can play football. They even help him get his driver’s license and buy him a truck. And finally they legally adopt Michael.
The trials and victories that ensue allow for much character development, especially in Michael. But the star of the show is just as much (or more) Leigh Anne as it is Michael Oher. Sandra Bullock’s role as Leigh Anne is (in this critic’s mind, at least) her best yet. Who would have thought that Bullock could pull off a role as a conservative, no-nonsense, but compassionate, Southern woman?
Some of her best moments in the movie are when she’s confronting people. She confronts the racism of her rich, white lady friends after she tells them that she’s considering adopting Michael, an African-American, into her family. And most memorable of all is a scene when she’s looking for Michael after he’s run away to his old neighborhood in the bad part of town. She meets up with some hoodlums who are threatening Michael. “If you so much as set foot downtown you will be sorry,” she says. “I’m in a prayer group with the D.A., I’m a member of the NRA, and I’m packing.” How’s that for a pithy movie line?
Director John Lee Hancock’s “The Blind Side” uses all of the old Hollywood, tug-on-your-heartstrings tricks that are a staple of feel-good dramas. But they are still effective, because the story is genuinely inspiring. And if there’s one thing you want in a movie like this, it is characters that you deeply care about. This movie delivers on that front, as well. The film has some Christian themes in it, but they are more subtle than in other recent films such as the Christian sports drama “Facing the Giants”. “The Blind Side” is not preachy. But it does show the Tuohys’ Christian faith as an important and defining characteristic of who they are and who they become as Michael impacts their lives. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It moved me and inspired me. And I heartily recommend it.
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