The Blind Side

There's little doubt that Memphis interior designer Leigh Anne Touhy and her family did a noble thing when they adopted Michael Oher, a hulking, homeless 17 year old, helped him get his grades up, and set him down the path towards a career as a pro footballer. They, and he, deserve a much better movie than the sanctimonious, self-satisfied pap that is The Blind Side, a film that Ned Flanders might find two-dimensional and preachy.

The story is based on a chapter from a non-fiction book by Michael Lewis about the recruitment process for American football. Oher (Quinton Aaron), the barely literate child of a crackhead mother, is admitted to an exclusive Christian school in an act of charity, tempered with the football coach's hope he will make a formidable addition their school team.

When football-loving parent Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) realises that despite his scholarship this gentle giant has to sleep in the school gymnasium, she takes him into her palatial home with the support of her husband, fast food millionaire Sean (Tim McGraw). It's especially generous of them considering the family woes: nine-year-old son, SJ (Jae Head), is suffering from a terminal case of Movie Kid. All freckles, gapped teeth and catchphrases, SJ is like a scamp from a 1960s sitcom - cloying, artificial, insufferable. It's a car crash of a performance, and director John Lee Hancock's camera just can't seem to look away.

SJ and Michael bond over videogames, while the Tuohys' teenage daughter Collins (Lily, er, Collins) reacts to the sudden arrival of a new, taciturn, big, big brother with unteenager-like forbearance. Michael can't play for the school team until he starts getting better grades, and the school's teachers rally round with righteous goodwill to help the poor black kid grapple with English, science and history. Once admitted onto the field, he proves to have the perfect girth to play offensive tackle - one of the most valuable assets to an American NFL team - and it's not long before college recruiters start calling.

All very inspirational stuff, to be sure, but it's more than two hours into the film before Big Mike pointedly says: "Nobody's asking me what I want." The Blind Side has been a huge hit with bible belt audiences, thrilled by the Tuohys' colourblind charity and goodness, but African-American pundits have been outraged at the way the passive Michael is pushed and prodded by his wealthy, white minders - like one of the ketchup bottles that SJ shunts around the dining table to demonstrate football moves. They're right: it's incredibly condescending.

Sandra Bullock's Oscar nomination for this is disturbing, rather like Sarah Palin's nomination for Vice President. She steamrollers through the movie, utterly convinced of the rightness of her actions and shouting down her opposition. The film seems constructed so as to keep the spotlight on Bullock: everyone else is either a cardboard cutout of saintly goodness (hooray!), a risible cliché of intolerance (boo!) or a clammed-up cipher (Michael). It's too bad the filmmakers did not see the ironies in this story and approach it with some subtlety. This tale of selflessness and loving one's fellow man would have made a great movie about selflessness and loving one's fellow man. Nick Dent