The Blind Side – This weekends best of show
The Blind Side – This weekends best of show
Rated: PG-13 Time: 2:08
Stars: Sandra Bullock, Jae Head, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Lily Collins, Ray McKinnon, Kathy Bates, Omar Dorsey and others
Final Grade: A
While the media and the rest of the world are uber inundating the airways and internet with hype about vampires and other mythical creatures, let’s talk about reality, humanity and what is probably the best flick released this weekend.
Based on the remarkable true story of Baltimore Ravens tackle Michael Oher, Blind Side opens up with some old footage of Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann’s blindsided tackle in 1985 by Giant’s linebacker Lawrence Taylor. The opening, narrated by Bullock as Leigh Ann Tuohy as she reviews the play that would change her life and would end Theismann’s career on the gridiron.
“Big Tony” Hamilton(Dorsey) has a little problem. He’s trying to get his kid into what is basically an all white Christian school in Memphis. It’s also trying to get another kid in the school as well, “Big Mike” Oher(Aaron). While the two kids shoot hoops in the basketball yard, Hamilton tries to talk Coach Cotton (McKinnon) into letting them both be admitted. McKinnon balks when Hamilton explains about “Big Mike”, but convinces the coach to look out his window and watch the two boys play. McKinnon is awestruck. He sees a talented huge hulk of a player that he desperately needs on his team.
It takes some cajoling with the admissions board at the school, but McKinnon gets his way and Mike is admitted. The problem is, Mike has an almost nonexistent academic record after being shuffled from one grade to another by the public school system and he doesn’t have a home to go back to at night. Mike’s family was separated by family services several years before with the kids all being sent separate ways to separate families. He now lives with a plastic bag which he carries around that has an extra change of cloths and that’s basically his life.
Basically ostracized at school by his peers due to his being different and by many teachers due to his lack of academic abilities, life starts slow and hard for him at the new school. But, his luck improves when one teacher discovers how to get through to him and he meets a little spark plug named SJ Tuohy(Head).
Tuohy’s family have several businesses in the Memphis area and are fairly well heeled. They had already caught eye of Mike during his sister Collins’s (Collins) volleyball games and happen on him one evening on their way home as he was walking to the laundromat where he regularly did his evening laundry. They pick him up, bring him home for the evening and this starts what will become a major change in both of their lives.
Leigh Anne Tuohy(Bullock) is a tenacious bulldog once she gets her mind set on something and she’s determined to bring out the incredible potential she see’s in Mike. As she goes through the steps of becoming his legal guardian, we’re taken through even more of his history than we already have seen of his growing up in the projects. His reunion with a long lost brother in a restaurant after a family meal is touching as is Leigh Ann’s meeting with his mother in her apartment.
Mike becomes part of the family and when he shows up on the family Christmas card picture, sparks a few comments from the family members not familiar with the changes in the Tuohy household. But life goes on and with it the stories, trials and laughs as mutual assimilations occur. Mike struggles with grades and the family brings in Miss Sue (Bates) to tutor Mike. Keep in mind that the Tuohy family are die hard Ole Miss alumni and fans. Not only do they want to see Mike going to their alma mater they want to see him playing football for Ole Miss. Problem is his grades need to really improve.
Not without some difficulty and some humorous interventions and impromptu on the field tutoring from Leigh Ann, Mike becomes a key member of the school’s football team as they roll forward towards a division championship. SJ all the while is compiling home video of the games which is starting to show up on the desks of major college football coaches. The coaches are impressed and they show up en masse at his school to watch practices and the recruiting race is afoot. Frankly it’s as much fun to watch opportunistic SJ negotiating with all the coaches as it is to watch them fall over themselves to recruit Mike. What was also surprising was the attitude of the NCAA investigator and Mike’s pleasantly surprising response to her.
In Blind Side we see a side of Bullock we’ve not seen in her previous two flicks this season. I was concerned that her third movie of the year would be a third strike, but it’s clearly a charmer. And, clearly Bullock doesn’t need photoshop to make her look great.
Aaron does a great job of bringing Oher’s life to the screen and at the end you’re going to be very touched, moved and even entertained. It’s not every day we hear about people bringing this kind of care and change to a stranger, but it’s the kind of story of people working to fix one thing at a time that humanity really needs to hear more of if we’re going to better our planet and the lives of our fellow man.
At the end of the movie, the audience I saw it with was totally silent. Nobody left the theater as not only the credits scrolled but so did the pictures of the real Tuohy family, including their son Mike. That in itself was a tribute to a great movie and an incredible story.
I’m Don Rima, and that’s the way I saw it, From Where I Stand.
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