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Written by Dan Mecca, November 20, 2009 at 3:00 am 

Warner Brothers | USA | 128 mins

Movies like this tend to separate the cynics from the optimists. While it is based on an incredible true story (in Memphis, a well-off white family, the Touhys, brought in a large young black man raised in the projects named Michael Oher and eventually adopted him), the film doesn’t feel real all the time.

Sitting in the packed-to-the-brim advanced screening, I heard the sounds of inspired tears and the cheers of enlighten viewers, and I shrugged and thought: “if there’s a movie to get inspired over, why not let it be this one?” Both noble in its retelling of the true story and self-aware of the stereotypes its rather blatantly exploiting (privileged whites as the only means to help a poor black kid succeed), the film is less an “issues” movie (poor public education, poor government housing, poor race issues, etc.) and more a straight drama, with a little bit of comedy and a little bit of sports added in. Director John Lee Hancock has been in this territory before (he directed The Rookie ) and is equipped to “tell it like it is.” Unfortunately, he seems equipped for little more.

Starting with a strange opening praising Lawrence Taylor and the position of left tackle (which Oher plays) and finishing with an off-putting final 20 minutes full of fabricated, unbelievable conflict (to give Michael, and the Touhys, one more cross to bear, bridge to cross it must be presumed), this film strives somewhere in the middle, most especially when Sandra Bullock (who plays Leigh Anne Touhy) and Tim McGraw (playing Leigh Anne’s fast food chain-owning husband Sean) are on the screen.

Bullock has always found success in the rom-com game because of her everywoman-like spunk. She uses that spunk in different ways here as Leigh Anne, sporting a deep-dropping Southern drawl, an array of tight-fitted white skirts and more than a few trips to the gym to show them skirts off. And it all works to her character – Leigh Anne’s got the balls in her marriage, and McGraw’s Sean has got no problem with it. The country singer-turned actor has always shown range (within that Middle America, true blue typecast he’s got going) and has clearly grown more comfortable with it here, sporting some comedic timing and well-practiced Southern charm.

Quinton Aaron takes on the role of Michael, and, though he’s given precious little to do, he makes the most of it. Michael’s not an idiot, just treated like one. And in this movie, the people who treat him like that are his stereotypically evil, black, project-trapped criminals and his subconsciously racist white private school teachers. But there are some (if only a precious few) twists to these stereotypes, most namely Coach Cotton, who opens the film pleading with his fellow private school teachers to consider letting Michael go to school. When they reply with the obvious, “so he can play football for you and win games,” he replies that he cares less about football than “doing the right thing.”

While overwrought and poorly scripted, the coach turns from this moment as the film goes on, revealing himself a more complicated character than at first glance. A little more of this in the screenplay (written by Hancock, adapted from a book by Michael Lewis) in a couple more characters would have gone a long way.

Even Leigh Anne is one note, though it be a fun note to play. And Bullock does play it well. Allotted a bit more depth (perhaps some deep-seated racism in herself, or internal self doubt, which she appears to have none of) this could have been a career-reshaping performance for the thespian. At one point, McGraw’s Sean points out to Michael about Leigh Anne, “She’s like an onion, you have to peel her back one layer at a time,” to which I thought – no, no I do not believe that is true.

Not that I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to be cynical about this film, because Michael Oher DID find success and DOES now play in the NFL BECAUSE OF THESE SUCCESSFUL WHITE PEOPLE WHO FOUND THE GOODNESS IN THEIR HEART TO HELP A NEEDFUL SOUL.

I wanted to let this film make me believe that in a perfect world where people were selfless color would be blind, and that this story is that hope of that foreseeable future.

But then the movie doesn’t believe that anyway. For every moment of triumph (and there are many, plus a near complete absence of notable conflict throughout), the only change that occurs is Oher’s situation. At the film’s end, Leigh Anne’s friends are still racist whities and Michael’s brothers in the projects are still no-good hoodlums. And while this may have been how it all went down in the real world, this isn’t the real world, it’s the movies, and I wanted to believe that this movie believed that there are more Leigh Anne Touhys out there, waiting to help.

But The Blind Side is amazed, just as all its viewers will be, that this ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Imagine that.

Yea, imagine that.

5 out of 10