The Blind Side

I’ve yet to really be captured by a movie that fits in the sports/inspirational class and 2009’s The Blind Side didn’t change that. Based on the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis, this John Lee Hancock film does little to escape the formulaic nature of the genre and doesn’t particularly give anything of depth or interest.

The Blind Side never tries to do too much, which is its downfall. It tells the story of Michael Oher and the wealthy white Christian family that took him in and saved him from certain disaster in the ghetto. However offensive or stereotypical one might find the story, it is based on true events and the characters are based on real people.

Quinton Aaron stars as Oher, a homeless 17-year-old with a shattered background. He finds himself enrolling in a private Christian school but struggles to fit in with the school’s academic standards. He is an enormous young man, however, and is instantly pegged to do well in the school’s sports programs. This causes a bunch of people to rally around Oher and to see him as their cause.

Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) is an assertive and well-off woman who loves her family and tries to live as a good Christian woman. She and her husband (Tim McGraw) decide to take in Oher after seeing his circumstances and they grow close, forming a larger family with him in it. This leads to some minor complications, but there is a surprisingly small amount of diversity. Oher pursues football, mainly because of his size and protective instincts, and the Tuohy’s help him along the way to a football career.

It would be pretty reasonable to say that Hancock is not one of the finer directors of his era. His films include The Alamo and the 2002 sports film The Rookie and he has pegged the heroic schmaltz thing pretty well. He plays it to maximum effect here, too, utilizing the predictable Carter Burwell score to push all the right buttons. Hancock never pulls this film past Lifetime movie territory, however, and it’s all incredibly formulaic and simple-minded.

The subject and the performances deserved a better and bolder approach from the director. Aaron is a gifted performer and he draws a lot out of Oher, giving him a personality despite a very dull script. Bullock is good enough too, offering a smug and self-righteous character with dimensions to her Christianity. One hopes the smugness was purposeful, of course.

The problem with The Blind Side is that it does the source material a disservice by providing little to not ambiguity about what’s going on here. It’s really, really easy to fall into the trap of the white Christian family to the rescue of the poor black man. It’s really, really easy to draw those conclusions and many critics, perhaps rightly, have done just that.

The reason it’s easy to draw these sorts of conclusions is the weakness of the Hancock direction and script. He simply never elevates the material to a level that could make it cinematically interesting or emotionally gripping. There are no significant bumps in the road that can’t be merely assessed as character flaws or “external prejudices.” The only racism explored, for instance, comes from so-called “rednecks” that share a lot in common with our movie’s protagonists. Yet Hancock never explores the nuances and never clarifies his characterizations, leaving us either bored or offended.

In the end, The Blind Side just tries to hard to tell a feel-good story and never explores the reality or subtlety of such a story. It simply feels fake, which is unfortunate for an interesting life tale. The performances are good but not good enough to save this bland, uninteresting, unchallenging motion picture.

Trailer: