The Blind Side

Drew's Thoughts:
First of all, it's embarrassing that this film currently has a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and there is a bit of Oscar buzz brewing for Sandra Bullock.
Writer/Director John Lee Hancock takes a (true) story with a lot of problematic issues and whitewashes it into oblivion making it into easily digestible Holiday pap that an audience can sit through and feel like they're learning something without having to go through the trouble of, you know, thinking or asking questions.
Here's a story that begins with Michael Oher and ends with him playing for the Baltimore Ravens yet through the whole 128 minutes the film never probes the character in any depth (there are literally only a handful of instances in the film where he says more than four words of dialogue at a time.) Instead you get the story of the sweet, tough talkin' Southern lady who rescued this lovable oaf (who's only apparent skills are his "protective instincts" making him out to be more like a dog than anything) and just wouldn't give up. The movie is just drowning in a frustrating "momma knows best" mentality. Thank heavens she brought this black boy out of the bad, literally all black world and into the good, literally all white world and she can be a good role model for him since his mom is a crack addict and "can't even remember who his father is."
The film occasionally pretends to deal with hypocrisy such as when the private high school football coach wants Michael to be admitted into the school "not be cause of sports, but because we're Christian" and then Bullock sort of calls him on it later in the film. But the film, a complete hypocrisy in itself, totally sidesteps the real issue at play here, that no one in the movie EVER asks Michael if he wants to play football or even if he's good at it. They just assume he does and is because he's a BIG BLACK BOY!
When Michael chooses to play football at Ole Miss (which the family, die-hard Ole Miss alums, has been basically brainwashing him to pick) the NCAA investigates the goings on to make sure that boosters like the family aren't just adopting underprivileged youth and buying them expensive new cars in order to funnel them into their university's football program, and it's a totally legitimate concern. But the woman representing the NCAA, who is black, is shamelessly written as a villain. And when Bullock's character hears this (she is presumed innocent of the charges) she feels bad and says "you know what? I never asked him if he wanted to go to Ole Miss. I just did everything in my power to get him to choose it" she seems to learn her lesson but when she talks to Michael about instead of fucking asking him where HE wants to go to school she TELLS HIM to go to Tennessee (her arch nemesis that she tried to get him to not pick.) I mean what is the fucking lesson here?
The only silver lining is that Carter Burwell did the score so the music was pretty good, though it's his fantastic work on Where the Wild Things Are and especially A Serious Man that will be worth remembering for your Dolphin ballot.