The Blind Side 032310

The movie starts when a black man arrives at a Christian prep school with his son and a boy, Mike, who “sleeps on his couch from time to time”. He approaches the school’s coach and asks if he could put in a word for the two boys because they’re gifted athletes and he wants them to get out of the slop of public schools. The coach is amazed at their natural talent and does so; even after Mike is found to be scholastically unable to be on a sports team, he still pushes for him to be admitted because it’s the right thing to do. Fast forward a few months, the son has dropped out but Mike, is still regularly attending though he keeps to himself and feels like an outcast because he’s homeless, black, and a good foot taller than everyone. The only person who makes an effort to befriend him is a young boy named S.J. One night, while driving home S.J.’s family sees Mike walking by the side of the road. The mother, Sandra Bullock, insists he come home with them since he has nowhere else to go. What follows is the story of Mike’s relationship with the family.

This appears to be a sports movie. It’s the true story of NFL left tackle Mike Oher’s life through college, and sports do play a part but it is not a sports movie. It’s a movie about how love can change someone’s life and how doing the right thing can be hard but is still worth doing. Sandra Bullock plays her character flipside from how we usually see her. She’s normally very sarcastic or a little on the silly side. This one jokes enough to make you like her but at the same time is essentially a dramatic role. If you’ve been a fan of her for a long time you almost think to yourself, aw... she’s grown up. She was the only one nominated for an award in this movie but that’s really just because her character stood out as the lead role. All the actors, even Tim McGraw, did an excellent job. Quinton Aaron in particular gave a very touching and mature performance as Mike. He looks ignorant but at the same time you can tell he’s not. Mom’s will cry at this movie.

This year, for the first time, there were ten best picture nominations and I think that’s the only reason this film got one. It’s a great movie but not that great. The pacing is very slow in the beginning and some of the jokes were a bit cheesy. But these are minor complaints about an otherwise really good movie.

B+. An excellent and touching family movie but nothing really new or groundbreaking.