DRAMA; 2hr 8min
STARRING: Sandra Bullock, Quinton Aaron, Tim McGraw
OK, size matters: Aaron and Bullock
Footballer Michael Oher (Aaron) starts out a piteous case in writer-director John Lee Hancock’s true-life tale. Michael’s father is dead, his mother is an addict and the Memphis projects are deadening. And they don’t call him Big Mike for nothing: the kid is a colossus with the lonely heft of a container ship. But his luck changes when he is taken on by a Christian school where interior designer Leigh Anne Tuohy (Bullock) is a parent. Leigh Anne looks like a permafrosted socialite. In fact, she’s a doer and a mettlesome mother hen who generously takes Michael under her trim wing and into her family’s luxurious home; McGraw is her easygoing husband, Sean. There, Michael discovers a talent for football that takes him all the way to the NFL.
It makes emotional sense that America has embraced Michael’s Cinderella story. The Blind Side isn’t a great movie, being too enamoured of its own worthiness. Yet through the unlikely assent of a boy with the deck slammed against him, it’s a shout-out to possibility in a politically and socio-economically challenged time.
