The Blind Side (2009)

Before getting into the review I wanted to comment on Elwood J Blues’ post about Peanut Butter Cup songs because The Blind Side totally has… the opposite of one of those. You know that song Goin’ Up The Country by the band Canned Heat? The one that was apparently the theme song to Woodstock? The one that sounds like it was sung by a severely retarded person and features a flute solo? A FLUTE solo!? This may be the worst song of all time. Really, it’s between this and Mairzy Doats. Who Let the Dogs Out doesn’t even get into the picture, people. Anyway, they play this at the end of the movie. I’m sure whomever made the decision to do so did because they thought it would be a Peanut Butter Cup song. Instead, it’s a Cadbury’s English Breakfast song. I dare you to click on that second link. I DARE YOU.

Anyway, here at popbunker.net, we feel it is our duty to provide you, the reader, with the best pop culture experience available. If that means making sure that at least one person has watched every single Best Picture nominee this year even though there are ten of them now and most years even five is about three too many, that’s what we do. So it was with more than a little bit of reluctance that I nominated myself to be the person to go see The Blind Side, a movie with a Magical Negro, Sandra Bullock, *and* bolde core values. I was half-expecting to drown in a sea of suck, my only potential solace that it was written by the guy who wrote Moneyball, Billy Beane Michael Lewis.

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There is no crying in football. THERE IS NO CRYING IN FOOTBALL

It pains me to admit this, but I actually liked this movie quite a lot. Not “Best Picture of 2009″ a lot, or even “should have been nominated” a lot, but more than enough. I may as well turn in my geek card now (Official King of Geeks Neil deGrasse Tyson called me last week and said that one more admission like the vocal jazz one would get it revoked) (that is not actually true), but even so, it was enjoyable in large part because of two things:

1. I am a sucker for tearjerker movies. I cried during Rent. Look, I don’t feel any better typing that than you do reading it, but it’s true.

2. It’s about offensive linemen in American football, the most awesome position in any sport.

A lot of people, even fans of American football, look at offensive linemen as clumsy, fat, stupid oafs. They are to a man big guys – the Kansas City Chiefs had a guy a couple years back who was regarded as far too small for the tackle position at 260 pounds – but particularly once you get to the college and pro levels, they are far from clumsy. This aspect is beautifully demonstrated at the beginning of the movie. They also aren’t stupid, not at all. Despite the fact that offensive line in action showcases the fewest amount of plays that the casual observer might regard as genius (a la Michael Jordan’s slam dunks or Peyton Manning’s ability to pick out an open receiver in a split second), it’s in reality a lot of hard work involving footwork, leverage, anticipating how your opponent is going to try to get past you before he moves, and a whole host of other little things. I played tackle in high school. I wasn’t good at it, but thanks to that experience I feel like I understand it well enough to “get” what they established in the movie.

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The actual Michael Oher with the actual Twohy parents.

As you may know, The Blind Side is loosely based on the real-life story of Michael Oher, who came from the bad part of Memphis and who was actually homeless before the Twohy family (the dad was a college point guard of some ability) took him in. If you like the movie, it’s probably best not to go in and read Wikipedia or whatever to get the real truth of the whole thing. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. “It really happened” is the oldest cop-out in the book when it comes to storytelling; if something feels hokey to the person reading the book or watching the film, it will feel hokey even if the hokey bits are Based On A True Story.

The Blind Side was actually not nearly as hokey as I expected it to be. Quinton Aaron is probably too big, physically speaking, to ever be a major player in Hollywood, but I thought he did just fine playing Michael Oher. He was understated and maybe even a little wooden at times but that fit in perfectly with his character. Sandra Bullock, in perhaps the finest acting job of her career, did not fall down once in the entire movie. I hope that doesn’t count as a spoiler. The kids seemed a little one-dimensional and Disney-fied, but that’s sort of what you expect from this kind of movie.

There were a lot of very corny and stupid places this movie could have gone but didn’t, and if it didn’t really do much more than gloss over some of the more interesting aspects of the family’s adoption of Oher such as the racism of the community and just how altruistic the Twohys were (IRL both were Ole Miss boosters and while the movie does have an NCAA official question Oher about the fact that he just happened to pick Ole Miss as his school of choice after the entire Southern collegiate system tried to recruit him, it’s quickly dismissed), I don’t know that one should expect more from the movie. Just go in, enjoy it, and maybe learn a little bit about football and the kindness of strangers. Anything more would just be nit-picking.