The Blind Side (Monday, December 7, 2009) (189)

I have always been skeptical of Sandra Bullock and her alleged appeal. She has never really done much for me. I guess she has a nice body, but I've never found her especially *hot* - and always found her acting so pedestrian (if not outright bad) that it's barely worth mentioning. As a result of this, I was very worried about The Blind Side, a film where she plays a Southern WASP who takes in a poor black kid with a hard past and a good heart.

I figured this role would be beyond her abilities and she would junk it up trying to stretch to it (like how she stretched in The Proposal). I was surprised by her performance, though, as it was pretty solid and not too overdone. The film overall is good, not great, but also not terrible.

Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) is a giant of a teen who looks like a football lineman from across the room (or from outer space). His childhood in Memphis was terribly traumatic and he has been left homeless without any friends or family. After he is offered a spot in a tony parochial school, he is taken in by the Touhy family. Mother Leigh Anne (Bullock) and father Sean (Tim 'Yeah, My Daddy's Name Was Tug, Fuck You' McGraw) are a super rich couple with two kids who live in a magnificent mansion 'on the right side of town'.

The Touhys are huge Ole Miss boosters (for the non-football fans out there, that's the University of Mississippi and their mascot is a mustachioed plantation owner with guns ablazin' - classy) and realize that if they can get Michael to learn how to block in football, he can be a great offensive lineman in high school, college and the NFL. In order to do that, he has to work hard to get his grades up, keep out of trouble, not slip back in with the gangs in his old neighborhood and deal with whatever demons he has in his head.

There are two ways of looking at this movie: As a story of a tough-luck kid who is trying to transform his life into something better; or, as a story of a football player who works hard to make a name for himself and changes his life by playing football. The first story is rather trite and saccharine full of all sorts of tearful moments where he tells his family that he loves them. The second story falls totally flat as the football scenes are terribly choreographed and shot.

The main football scene - somewhere around the mid-point of the film, involves Michael's first game (it seems his first season playing is his senior year and he's mostly playing because of his size, rather than his talent). In it, he gets beat on the block time and time again by a fast linebacker/defensive end (it's high school ball - it's hard to tell what position the kids is playing). He figures out that he has to block the guy between his pads and drive him backward. He does this - and then proceed with one of the strangest plays ever, driving the guy backwards 50-some yards.

Rather than showing us the block or the play that results in the hole he opened up, director John Lee Hancock shows us the reactions of his family, Bullock, McGraw and Co., in the stands. This is dumb. I will admit that it must be really hard to make a movie about a non-skill position (quarterback, running back, wide receiver), but the answer to that problem is not to cut away and not show the play. It should be to show us his block or show the block and cut to the running back going down field to the end zone. The 'big uglies', as Keith Jackson would say, deserve better than to concentrate on their sassy mothers.

On top of this, many of the football scenes are used as comic relief with a buffoon coach in an almost-Necessary-Roughness-style farce. This neither helps tell the story, nor does it set the right tone for the film. That Michael has trouble being physically brutal the way he needs to in order to play well tells more about his psychology than about him being a 'gentle giant'. This should have been handled better.

In the second half of the film, after Michael has become a major football star, he is pursued by all SEC football programs from South Carolina to Arkansas. Again, this part is played as a joke - which is a mistake considering this leads to the heart and soul of the movie - that Michael feels loved by his family and football is one way they can mutually show that love.

(One of the jokes in this sequence is that all of the SEC coaches shown are no longer at the schools they are recruiting for. Phil Fulmer recruits for Tennessee - he left after the 2008 season; Nick Saban recruits for LSU - he left after the 2004 season and now coaches for Alabama; Houston Nutt recruits for Arkansas - he left after the 2007 season and now coaches Ole Miss; Ed Orgeron recruits for Ole Miss, though he strangely never gives his name - he left after the 2007 season; Lou Holtz recruits for South Carolina - he left after the 2004 season and now slurs his words on ESPN; Tommy Tuberville recruits for Auburn - he resigned after the 2008 season. This is funny in a college-football world, but I think totally falls flat on 90% of the audience. Then again, I don't live in SEC-country, so maybe it plays better in the South.)

The acting throughout is pretty good. This is clearly the best role and best performance of Bullock's career - and it's a good thing too considering she's currently the biggest female box office draw in America. She is sweet, serious and sarcastic when necessary. She talks down her bigoted friends at lunch who worry about having a 'black boy' in her house (a totally unnecessary, badly written scene, by the way) and stares down the hoodlums in the housing project where Michael's mother lives. McGraw is also good - playing an up-tight fast food franchisee with great ease and talent. The young son, SJ, is played by Jae Head who played the same role in the television version of Friday Night Lights and Hancock. Someday he'll grow up and become more than just an excitable young boy.

Quinton Aaron does a very nice job playing Michael. He is very vulnerable and sweet and the pain he feels comes through well. I wish he had given a bit more for me to bite into with the performance (he's basically binary: sweet or scared), but that could be the writing and directing as much as his performance.

The script, also by Hancock, is probably the worst part of the film. Throughout it doesn't know if its a comedy or a drama (it's a drama) and it very easily tosses aside characters who we see once and never again. In the opening scene we see Michael with his brother. After this, we never see the brother again. Later, we meet a teacher who believes in Michael's potential, played by Kim Dickens, but after about three scenes, she falls out of the movie as well.

In addition to this, there is a strange sexual tension between Michael and his adopted sister. Several times we see her looking sexually turned on by him (he, on the other hand, is totally neutered), but this never goes anywhere. Even if this actually happened, it doesn't help tell the story and just comes in as noise beside the main thread (it's also weird and borderline racist, I think, to have a story about a white girl who is sexually mystified by a big black man).

This movie should have been cut by about 15 minutes. It runs more than two hours and the extra time is not necessary. The script is a mess and the direction is not wonderful. Bullock, McGraw and Aaron are good and there's the nucleus of a good story buried inside it. This movie has a lot to offer, but is not wonderful.

Stars: 2 of 4