“The Blind Side” is the worst film I have ever seen in a theater.
Last week I was waiting in line for a showing of Up in the Air. It was overbooked and I didn’t make it in, but my friends and I did manage to get offered tickets to our choice of two movies: Old Dogs or The Blind Side. I knew Old Dogs would be terrible, and I didn’t know what Blind Side was. I chose poorly. This movie was the most trite “pat yourself on the back Christian whitey” film since Birth of a Nation. It’s about a good white upper class Christian family from the suburbs of Memphis:
Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock): An sassy overbearing caricature of a southern mother who is right about everything and has a nice ass. Her ass is the only redeeming part of this movie, a point I know the director didn’t miss considering the lingering shots of her walking away at the end of nearly ever scene. Even the poster is nothing but a showcase for her ass.
Sean Touhy (Tim McGraw): A supposedly go-getter dad with weird hair who never goes and gets anything unless his domineering wife tells him. It’s funny comedy because she is a firecracker and he has given up on making his own decisions, instead he sits in bed and pretends to read while daydreaming about the sweet release of death.
Sean Jr AKA SJ (Some kid who I never want to see in a movie again): Sassy 8-year-old who says things that only his parents and audience members who think they are his parent find cute. The most annoying performance I have ever seen. Every time this kid was on screen I felt like I was scraping my teeth across a chalk board. At least the rest of his career will be a slow downward spiral into drugs and depression.
Collins (Some decent looking chick): Basically just a prop in the background. Maybe even more of a set dressing than a prop. She has very little to do in the movie other than be the person that everyone insinuates the big black puppy is going to rape.
This good white Christian family finds a giant black puppy dog that looks like a person, but is not written as such.
When the movie starts the big puppy is living on the couch of Big Tony, the only positive African American character in the film. Because he is a positive character the director feels he has to demean him by having him say to the christian academy admissions people that he can pay because he has a good job as a mechanic across town, oh those silly blacks and what they think a good job is. I actually heard a person behind me giggle when he said that. Big Tony gets his son and Big Mike accepted into the academy. Soon after Tony’s wife, the first in a series of evil black women, kicks Big Mike out onto the streets.
Mike wanders around with a plastic shopping bag that has one shirt in it and steals popcorn for the next half hour or so. He runs into another black woman in a laundromat who leers at him and runs away. After this he continues walking around in the rain. The Touhy’s see him walking around in the rain and realize they could make him a house slave and he could be the greatest donation they could ever give to Ole Miss as members of the booster club. Unfortunately human donations are not tax deductible.
We are next treated to a cuntload of scenes about Mike not knowing how to live in a people house and being so grateful to white people, Leigh Anne traveling to scary black neighborhoods that share more in common with a Chappelle Show sketch than reality, and SJ making me want to shoot myself in the head while other audience members are lapping up his comedy stylings. I’m not sure why they keep saying that the kid is just like his dad. SJ seems nothing like a brow-beaten shell of a man who spends all day crying on the inside while his wife mocks him. Instead he does things test-audiences deem adorable. They even have the stock scene of SJ and Mike singing and dancing in the car, which inevitably ends with an accident where Big Mike somehow saves the kid from an airbag by sticking his arm out because he scored in the 98 percentile in protective instincts. Oh yeah, there is that part. On some test Mike the giant guard puppy scored as in the bottom 5% in every category except “Protective Instincts.” Does this category really exist on some standardized test? I would seriously like to know. I don’t know how you quantify that.
Mike sucks at football, then Leigh Anne tells him to pretend the players are his family and his protective instinct super power kicks in allowing him to be the greatest. The coach and players watch her butt as she walks away.
Leigh Anne meets Mike’s mom, a crack head who doesn’t even know who his father was and doesn’t want to see him again. She comforts the weak black woman because she is a powerful white christian. She agrees to let them adopt her son.(I think, during this part I kept nodding off)
They convince Mike to go to Ole Miss as per their original plan. The evil black lady at the NCAA convinces him that the family doesn’t love him and is just using him to improve their college football team because she is jealous about how white and christian they are. Mike runs away and beats up a bunch of gangsters at a party because they were talking about raping white women. Somehow he doesn’t get shot. Leigh Anne goes up to the gangsters and intimidates them because she is 5′6″ of pure sassy with a generous helping of attitude. She finds Mike again and convinces him that they aren’t using him to boost their favorite team.(they are using him to boost their favorite team)
He tells the evil black NCAA woman that his family loves him and he is going to go to the school where his family goes.
Finally the film ends with the only interesting part, the footage of Oher being drafted into the NFL and a montage of photos of the actual family and Big Mike. This was seriously the only part of the movie that interested me, because it was actually real. It wasn’t a glossed over white christian fairy tail.
This film was a Lifetime Original Movie with a high budget. It was what would happen if Dolly Parton had written and directed Crash, and I HATED Crash. The fucking morons who watch this movie and claim that it is deep must have some major neck problems from attempting to dive into kiddie pools each summer.
I’m really glad I didn’t pay to see this steaming pile of angel shit. I would have left early if I weren’t there with other people. If you saw this movie and you liked it I feel sorry for you, but I know it’s not your fault. You tested in the 98 percentile for enjoyment of bullshit glossed over semi-true stories.
You ought to look up Billy Burr on youtube or itunes. He talks about all of the the racial tension sports movies. I have not and probably will not see this movie because I already know the formula, I have seen it already when it was called “Remember-the time-when-we-hated-these-certain-people-but-we-”suffered”-with-them-somehow-and-now-we-realize-we-were-friends-all-along-because-we-all-have-sneakers-on”.
The sad thing about this film is that it is told almost completely through the eyes of the white family, and we don’t really know what kind of things Michael Oher experienced. We barely know anything about him. All we know is that Bullock’s character had some friends that thought it was unwise to have him in the house.
The biggest argument people have given me is that it is a true story. The thing is, I like the story, but I would like the REAL story. This is film is obviously whitewashed and scrubbed clean of any unsettling reality. I would much rather have seen a doc or the story told in a real way, not a exaggerated tail about the worlds most perfect family of white knights saving “one of the good ones.” from getting dragged down by his own people. At least those movies had a somewhat positive message.
YOU ARE A DUMB ASS. THE NLIND SIDE WAS A GOOD MOVIE. SNADRA WAS SEXY AND SJ WAS FUNNY. COLLINS WAS BANGING. I WISH YOU GREW UP LIKE MIKE OHAR. YOU DESERVE IT AND DESERVE TO EAT SHIT
I want to thank you, Josh. I had been hoping for some hateful comments. Unfortunately, I had been hoping they would at least try to make an argument that I could dismantle. Some sort of reason this movie deserves the acclaim it has received.
Josh, you really have put me in a bad place. I can’t make fun of you, because you seem to have some sort of intellectual disability.
I have no rebuttal.
You have won this round.
Carson,
I was also wondering whether there is a test that measures “protective instincts”, especially one that might be given to an eighth grader. Must of the search results I saw had to do with tests given to dogs, but I’m not sure what that says about the accuracy of the movie.
Seems very “B” moviesque if they really did invent that “test”–like they needed a plot gimmick to advance the story and this was the best they could come up with (or maybe just the best that they could come up with that would be understood by a not very bright movie audience). Too bad because the real story seems like it would probably be very interesting.
By the way, your review cracked me up.
this is so meannnnn! you should be ashamedd!!! :’(
you must be some kinda jew or muslem to make fun of nice christian people!!!! you are going to hell!!!!
There is sooo much wrong with that last comment. But, Apparently since I am not a Jew or Muslem, I can’t make fun of the “nice christian” person that just left it, however. Too bad I didn’t know better when I was born because I really like to make fun of stupid racists.