Despairingly ignorant, The Blind Side never gets off its
bourgeois perch. Based on the teen life of Baltimore Ravens lineman
Michael Tuohy (Quinton Aron), the colossal black youth is rescued from
poverty when concerned white mom Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock)
allows him to live with her family. The Blind Side‘s take on
race relations isn’t as sensationalistic as Bullock’s Crash, but
is every bit as patronizing: Its MO isn’t understanding, empathy or
identification, just white self-congratulation. Gravitating toward
smaller kids in the schoolyard and getting in mischievous adventures
with Tuohy son SJ (Jae Head), Oher is alternately treated as a gentle
Frankenstein monster and a family dog. He’s allowed no moments of his
own. Skin-deep, endless and terrified of real human connection, The
Blind Side is a fraudulent issue movie for the socially empowered.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2009.
A fraudulent issue movie for the socially empowered? I just thought it was a nice story with some moments that were funny, touching, thought provoking, entertaining, etc. Man, you think too much. Pseudo Intelligentsia such as yourself should take a deep breadth. Perhaps a Werner Fassbinder, Ingmar Bergman, or Woody Allen (the non funny version) might be more to your taste. This movie is what it is. Get your head out of your ass and review it on the basis of this, not your expectations re what it should be. By the way, do yourself a favour and watch the PUSHER trilogy. Now that is film making!
I think it’s disingenuous to pitch the movie this way when the film itself acknowledges the white guilt thing directly with the question “Is this a white guilt thing?” Also, it’s based on a true story—how do you propose they could’ve changed it?
I think it was overlong—and Kathy Bates is completely pointless, but you can tell it was a “sticking to the autobiographical moment” deal, and tonally confused—all the gunplay and quick cuts near the end doesn’t jibe with the upper-crust fancy house that Taco Bell built. On second thought, maybe it does. But as heartwarming holiday movies go, there are much worse, and much more worthy of this kind of issue-twisting.
An interesting thing comparing The Blind Side to this week’s Precious: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/movies/2…