Sidelined

I'll admit, I wanted to see The Blind Side and find out why there was so much hype about Sandra Bullock. For the most part, her acting was ho-hum and while it may have been a reach for her, it was not an Oscar-worthy performance. The plot of The Blind Side was not of particular interest to me, but now that I have seen the film, I think the story would be better served by a documentary. If someone wanted to make a feature film about Michael Oher's rise from a bad family life and homelessness to one of potential and a career in the NFL, this is not how it should have been done. And, there is a book of the same title the movie is based on. Why not leave it at that?

The scenes where Bullock, portraying the mom who adopts "Big Mike," meddles on the football field and shouts at other parents on the sidelines are over the top and a little obnoxious. They ruin the scenes when she does make her character and motherly instinct seem real, such as when they are at home and she first realizes how little Big Mike has had in his life, from family relationships to material possessions.

When Bullock's character visits Mike's birth mother, it's one of the most or only humbling scenes that shows what both of the real women portrayed in that scene could have been feeling and going through.

The credits at the end of the film show footage and pictures of Michael Oher and his adopted family. They are a glimpse of the story that show it had the potential to be a documentary. If the real people The Blind Side is based off of agreed to have their story told by actors and to be a part of the end of the film, the director should have taken it a step further and put the more deserving characters in the limelight.

I guess I'll read the book.