From the Projects to the Ravens
The Blind Side overcomes its flaws.
By Thomas S. Hibbs
http://www.nationalreview.com/
November 25, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The Blind Side is the true story of the high-school years of Baltimore Ravens lineman Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), who was born in a Memphis housing project with no father and a drug-addicted mother. Because of his athletic potential and despite his woeful academic performance, Mike gains admission to a Christian high school. His big break comes when the Tuohy family, at first unofficially and eventually legally, adopts him.
The Blind Side is a standard uplifting Hollywood sports story, in which obstacles are overcome and the underdog ends up victorious. The film has its share of emotionally overwrought scenes and a few incredible moments. But The Blind Side, with a script adapted and directed by John Lee Hancock, who worked similar magic with The Rookie, manages to overcome these defects, largely because of its humor and genuine warmth, and because of a terrific performance by Sandra Bullock as the gorgeous, effervescent, and tough-minded Leigh Anne Tuohy.
Just before Thanksgiving, the Tuohy family — which also includes dad Sean (Tim McGraw in a solid performance), high-school-age daughter Collins (Lily Collins), and her younger brother, S.J. (Jae Head as a Macaulay Culkin clone who provides comic relief even if he overacts) — passes Mike, who’s wearing a T-shirt and walking alone on the road from school. Leigh Anne demands that Sean turn the car around and find out where Mike is going. Sensing that he has nowhere to go, she invites him to their home.
Mike is gentle and taciturn, but Leigh Anne slowly coaxes information out of him about his past — one that includes drug addiction, serial sexual encounters, and rampant violence. Brief trips to Mike’s former neighborhood provide a sense of the squalor and moral corruption that threatened to engulf his life and destroy any hope of future success. It must be said that these scenes, especially those in which Leigh Anne, dressed in posh, alluring clothes, confronts and intimidates gun-toting drug dealers, strain credibility.
Leigh Anne’s toughness comes through in more believable and more humorous ways in the rest of the film. During a football practice, in which Oher’s timid blocking on the offensive line exasperates his coach, Leigh Anne marches onto the field and, as she passes the baffled coach, informs him that he can thank her later. She then pulls Mike aside and explains to him that his teammates are family; in the same way that he would protect his new off-field family, he needs to devote himself to clearing the way for his on-field family. As she leaves the field, she tells the coach that he needs to know his players better. It turns out that Oher, well below average in standard measures of cognition, scores very high in protective instincts.
In his first game, Mike is taunted on the field by a brash and bigoted defensive lineman, and, from the stands, by that lineman’s redneck father. When Mike finally responds, he blocks the poor defender all the way off the field and into the stands. Leigh Anne turns to the boy’s father and says, “Hey, Deliverance, that’s my son!”
Mike’s awakening happens more easily and more rapidly on the field than in the classroom. Skeptical about his having being admitted at all, the teachers predict failure and are not deeply sympathetic. One makes the not unreasonable argument that the school has set him up for failure. With the help of a tutor, Miss Sue (Kathy Bates), Oher eventually comes to master the elements of essay writing.
Miss Sue initiates one of the funniest exchanges in the film. About to be hired by Leigh Anne, Miss Sue states that before they go any farther, there is one thing she needs to tell her. Leigh Anne hesitantly asks, “What is it?” Bates responds, “I’m a Democrat.” Tuohy is momentarily stunned. As Miss Sue leaves, Sean wonders aloud, “How is it that we took in a young black man before we ever met a Democrat?” The Tuohies’ sense of humor about their politics is clearly lost on the New York Times’s A. O. Scott, who scorns what he takes to be the film’s celebration of “selective charity.” It is refreshing to see Hollywood produce a film that portrays a Republican and Christian family in a favorable light. It is also refreshing that politics surfaces only in passing and is subordinate to a compelling story. If the film has a lesson, it is only indirectly political. It is about the intact, loving family as the ordinary condition of human flourishing.
— Thomas S. Hibbs, an NRO contributor, is the author of Shows about Nothing.
MOVIE REVIEW
'The Blind Side'
Sandra Bullock and newcomer Quinton Aaron have a warm and winning chemistry in director John Lee Hancock's fact-based story of a football-loving white family's adoption of a homeless black teen.
By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times film critic
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/
November 20, 2009
Watching "The Blind Side" is like watching your favorite football team; you'll cheer when things go well, curse when they don't, and be reminded that in football, as in life, it's how you play the game that counts -- though winning doesn't hurt, either.
I'm talking to the jocks here. The rest of you can just bring Kleenex and give in to this quintessentially old-style story that is high on hope, low on cynicism and long on heart. If Frank Capra was still around, director John Lee Hancock might have had to fight him for the job.
Based on the remarkable true story of Baltimore Ravens tackle Michael Oher -- once a homeless black Memphis teenager literally plucked off the road on an icy winter night by a well-heeled white family -- the movie stars Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy. She's a spitfire of a mom, and it's the kind of smart, sassy role Hollywood should have given the actress ages ago.
Michael's story begins in a Memphis project aptly named Hurt Village with a drug-addicted mother, an absentee father and a childhood in and out of foster homes, all of which we get compressed into a few quick flashbacks scattered through the film.
It's what became of Michael (newcomer Quinton Aaron) that the film is concerned with, and that is framed by something else entirely: the Tuohy family and Washington Redskins' quarterback Joe Theismann's career-ending injury in 1985 after a blindside tackle by New York Giants' linebacker Lawrence Taylor.
The film opens, as does the Michael Lewis book on which it is based, with a breakdown of the four seconds from the snap of the ball to the snap of Theismann's leg that would change the game, with Bullock narrating the still difficult to see footage from that night. (Theismann has said even he can't watch it.)
Michael, it turns out, will have the weight, size and speed to block the Lawrence Taylors of the world, an increasingly valuable commodity in the football world. And that's where the Tuohys come in -- as a football-obsessed family, they nurture his raw talent; as fundamental Christians, they keep an eye on his soul.Leigh Anne is a force of nature in a Chanel suit, armed with a cellphone and a .22. In the role, Bullock blows in like a tornado, issuing orders in a rapid-fire Southern drawl that defies speed and ruffles more than a few feathers. It's not her fault, she just knows she's right and won't stop until everyone else is on the same page.
And believe me, Bullock makes "join rather than fight" the option you want to take. She nails the character with every click, click, click of her heels and every toss of those perfectly coiffed blond locks. When she stares down a drug dealer while she assures him her Saturday Night Special works just fine on all the other days of the week, you feel like ducking too.
The rest of the clan is made up of husband Sean, played with an easygoing charm by country singer Tim McGraw, teenage daughter Collins (Lily Collins) and young son SJ, with Jae Head pulling off such a perfect mix of Leigh Anne's cockiness and Sean's charisma that you miss him when he's not around.
Michael ends up enrolled in the private Christian school where the Tuohy kids go. His size and agility had caught the coach's eye and he's accepted despite having a grade-point average that barely registers. That fateful freezing night when Leigh Anne takes him home comes soon after, and almost overnight he is being absorbed into the family, which has not only an open heart and an open mind, but a serious obsession with football, Ole Miss in particular.
What happens next is a testament to the unique people that both Leigh Anne and Michael are. As she begins to piece together the depressing back story of his life, he begins to trust that she will be there for him. These are emotional colors not easy to get to, but they happen here in moving ways because of the chemistry between Bullock and Aaron. She infuses the role with empathy, not pity; he brings an aching vulnerability and an innocence that are remarkable for someone with no formal training.
You know going in that this is a success story, but it still is deeply satisfying to see Michael's life unfold. He becomes a decent student in large part thanks to the help of his tutor Miss Sue ( Kathy Bates), another Ole Miss alum. He's a bull on the field and eventually the object of a college ball recruitment drive so extensive that the NCAA investigates. No one can quite believe the Tuohys would take him in with no ulterior motive, particularly after he chooses to go to Ole Miss.
After the fiasco of "The Alamo," Hancock is solidly back in his wheelhouse with another compelling sports story that echoes the human touch he brought to the 2002 sleeper hit "The Rookie." In "The Blind Side," he's pared much of the football analysis of the book away to keep the focus on the family. But one of the great treats of the film is the parade of real-life coaches, including such legends as Lou Holtz and Nick Saban, that come to recruit Michael. And there should be enough on-field action to get even the tough guys in the audience through the more emotional moments.
Wisely, Hancock has given the film as much humor as heart, whether it's Michael bench-pressing SJ or Leigh Anne calling in plays to a very irritated high school coach. By the time Sean points out the irony that they ended up having a black son before they had even met a Democrat (Miss Sue), you've long since accepted that there is nothing predictable about this story.
But in the end, this is Bullock's movie. She is Leigh Anne to such a degree you forget you're watching one of the best-known actresses around. And while her sass is both endearing and highly entertaining, it is the way she masks Leigh Anne's "never let them see you cry" vulnerability, especially when it comes to Michael -- the quick retreats when she's moved, shoulder thrown back, eyes staring straight ahead as she hands out the latest set of marching orders -- that leave you cheering for her too.
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