When a mainstream film about a football player with Sandra Bullock (All About Steve) in a lead role begins with a version of mournful, British folk musician Nick Drake’s “Cello Song,” certain hopes are raised within the viewer amid the puzzlement.
Since The Blind Side was based on a book by acclaimed journalist Michael Lewis, writer and director John Lee Hancock (The Alamo) really did have a chance to create a unique sports drama with loftier aims than just being easy-to-consume inspiration. Soundtrack choices aside though, there is very little in The Blind Side to distinguish it from the multitudes of predecessors in its genre — Radio, Friday Night Lights and Remember the Titans among them.
The introductory sequence to The Blind Side does present a neat overview of the larger ideas about the game of football expressed in Lewis’ book. But the sequence is really just a PowerPoint presentation on the impact of Lawrence Taylor and his body type, narrated by Bullock in the folksy, Southern accent of her character, Leigh Anne Touhy, with all of the idiotic wisdom that implies: “The first check you write is for the mortgage, the second is the insurance.”
After fits of clumsy storytelling involving glimpses of Michael “Big Mike” Oher’s (Quinton Aaron, Mr. Brooklyn) humble, grim beginnings, we are presented with the intersection of our two principal characters, Oher and Touhy. Oher has been walking the streets in between attending classes at a prestigious Christian prep school with Touhy’s children. His existence is precarious as he gets by on a scholarship and scrounges for leftover food after sporting events.
Upon seeing Oher homeless and wandering, Touhy does the “Christian” thing and takes him in. Naturally, she feels the trepidation of a rich white person suddenly forced into contact with a large, troubled black teenager from the other side of town. Touhy asks her husband Sean (a surprisingly decent Tim McGraw, Four Christmases), “You don’t think he’ll steal anything do you?”
He doesn’t steal anything and proves to be some sort of laconic, nurturing teddy bear. Rarely is one shown anything but undiscovered potential in Oher. The man is treated like a saint and a football savant whose only problems are created by the horrible upbringing he had. His occasional bursts of violence either come when his family is threatened or on the football field where they are encouraged.
While the obligatory montages of Oher gradually becoming a force on the field with heavy coaxing from Touhy are familiarly satisfying, the filmmakers do cheat a bit. For example, Oher had played a year of football in a public school before he had ever been goaded by Touhy’s unflinching commands to get out there and protect his quarterback, a fact conveniently ignored.
Another related problem in the neat linearity Hancock establishes is that for someone who is always said to be secretly intelligent, Oher’s decisions and actions are shockingly simple. Every time somebody shows him love, he performs on the football field. One has to wonder why Oher, who is naturally extremely mature, has to have his neediness emphasized so often with sad music scoring every haunted memory of his past. The Blind Side caricatures him to the point that the viewer begins to develop a sixth sense for every heart-tugging emotion he has.
Though it doesn’t mean much, this is Bullock’s best performance in quite a while. She plays a very broad, comic archetype and still keeps the film churning along nicely. Bullock and McGraw have an easy chemistry between them, and together they are as soothing as they come — wealthy yet magnanimous Republicans who act on Democratic ideals.
The real-life Oher is a rookie offensive tackle with the Baltimore Ravens now and still considers the Touhys his family. It’s a heartwarming tale that is converted into a mediocre film. The Blind Side is a pleasing distraction that does to some degree reassure the viewer of man’s capability for good but also displays man’s capability to tell a story in the same exact way over and over again.
vmain13@umdbk.com
RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars
