The trailer for The Blind Side went around the internets
the other month as a hee-larious meme. Remember? Was it for real, we
wondered? Surely it was joking. Surely some WASPy bitch
didn’t just say to Sandy Bullock, “Honey, you’re changing that
boy’s life!” and then double-surely Sandy B. didn’t just
whisper all misty-in-the-eyeballs, “No. He’s changing mine.” Who wrote
that? The Original Kings of Comedy? The court jester? Of
Chuckletown? The court jester in the throne room, standing before
the Original Kings of Comedy, lord regents of Chuckletown, capital city
of Laffsylvania, world’s leading manufacturer of shoulder pads,
double-breasted yellow suits, military defoliant, and the patented
Steve Harvey Mustache Fluffer™!? Nope. A real-life screenwriter
wrote it. On real-life purpose. To mimic real-life human speech and
emotions. REALLY.
That magical quote serves as a handy distillation of this entire
movie—a based-on-a-true-story story about Michael Oher, a very
large and very homeless black teenager who is plucked from the streets
of Memphis and adopted by some very white and very pleased with
themselves white people, led by a raving lunatic named Mrs. Benevolent
White Lady (the aforementioned Sandy B.), who is either a
creepy fanatical football booster for Ole Miss or is achieving
the impossible (apparently): learning to love a very large and scary
black person.
The thing is, this actually happened. (Interesting! So make
a fucking documentary, dickbuckets!) Michael Oher is a real person and
so is Mrs. Benevolent White Lady, but their on-screen dramatic
representations are about as far from real people as you can get
without being, like, a fern. And the racial stereotypes (oooh! Dark,
roiling nest of inner-city drug dealers!) are as nasty and dated and
unconsidered as anything since white people first discovered black
people. But instead of making a movie in which real humans do
believable things—you don’t always have to redecorate the facts
to make them fascinating—The Blind Side, unsurprisingly,
takes the nonsensical, manipulative emotional boilerplate route.
Huzzah.
Michael stares, bewildered and bitter, at a Norman Rockwell book.
Michael has to hear Sandy B. say the words “$10,000 couch.” Michael is
easily distracted by balloons. Michael doesn’t understand the rules of
football unless the white lady reframes them as a condescending family
metaphor (before every game!). Michael has to put his face real close
to Tim McGraw’s hairpiece. Also included: a precocious child, many
mentions of “the Christian thing to do,” near-constant having of each
other’s backs, Tim McGraw giving a soulful reading of The Charge of
the Light Brigade, and a Ferdinand the bull analogy so unchewable
it’s like a mouthful of sawdust and crayons and ham rinds. Frequently,
Mrs. BWL will say a sassy thing, and then later in the movie, Michael
will say it back to her, only slower
(slowness = meaningfulness).
At the very end, out of nowhere, Sandy B. says TO HER ADOPTED SON, “If
you get a girl pregnant out of wedlock… I will cut your penis off.”
It’s the Christian thing to do. What. The fuck. 
@36, 43:
Yeah, I can’t really get how 36 playtex doesn’t think any documentary has ever been made about any event that already happened. I’m pretty sure a lot of documentaries are historical in nature.
That being said, thanks for the review, Lindy! Good piece of writing. And I’ll probably skip this movie, it’s not worth the $6 -err- $14 by any means. The preview does a pretty shitty job of selling it (and they’re trying!), but Lindy’s review kinda puts the last nails in the coffin.
If it’s on a cable, maybe I’ll stop on it for a couple minutes before switching to the Daily Show. If it happens to be good, maybe I’ll keep watching. But I certainly won’t pay for it.
…WHY THOSE AND NOT THESE??
Just saw the movie, appx. 100 people at movie everyone very vocal and LOL t/o movie. 3 white people in audience. not sure why everyone loved the movie when these comments are saying blacks will not like it.
maybe the critics should see the movie first, not just the trailor. see how the audience responds…….
Why does it automatically have to be “White Woman’s Burden”? I agree that it’s got the whole Hollywood Feel-Good paint job over it, but in essence, this homeless kid needed a family, and this well-off family (who just happened to be white) saw a need and gave it to him. Why does everyone have to read ulterior motives? Projecting much?
And the reason you see movies like this and not the reverse (black family taking in a homeless white kid) is because that just doesn’t happen in real life (or the movies or TV, for that matter). I know several families (some in my family and on my block, ftm) who are white and have adopted black children (granted, they weren’t homeless teenagers, but stay with me). These people wanted children. These children needed families. Why does everything have to be about race? Why can’t it be about families providing homes to children who need them?
Granted, there are still a whole bunch of prejudiced people out there (of all races, not just whites), but it’s fucking 2009, for Pete’s sake! Can’t a movie just be a movie? Must we read ulterior motives into everything?
(And btw, the book is always better than the movie. It’s a natural law.)
You know the whole point of the movie is to show those who are less fortunate that there is hope. I happen to be a former foster child and I happen to come off the same streets as the guy in the movie. I found the movie very appealing for someone who has been through the same things. I am a christian and coming from a christian the things said in the movie are “The christian things to do” As for blacks and whites who cares! I am white and similar things happened to me if I had a movie about my life as a white person do you think everybody would be talking about black and whites I dont think so. Who cares what color the person is. I think it is pretty judgemental the things that people have said. I was simply looking up different things about the movie because I saw it an hour ago and I saw this article. Please People show more respect.
I was stunned by how lame this POS was. Certainly NOT Oscar worthy! >:(
I liked the first version of this movie. You know when the blue space people danced with all the wolves. That was cool but it definitely was not cool for Sarah Palin to call Lindsay Vonn fat. That was just plain mean
I can’t BELIEVE people are defending this movie. They obviously did not actually see it.
Somewhere between the line “bust a cap in yo’ ass” and the small, smart white child/huge, semi-retarded black manboy’s duet to “Bust a Move,” I realized how completely full of shit the Oscars must be.
I presume that a dickbucket would be a bucket of dicks or perhaps a recepticle of some sort assigned for the specific purpose of storage of wayward dicks.
Thank you thank you thank you BWL(benevolent -or bemused or batshit angry- white lady). I just saw this movie on cable, and was really troubled by it (especially establishing every black person as a source of pity of suspicion — e.g., NCAA violations lady). As a medium-sized black man, I’m actually kind of pissed that you summed it up so well… there you go again, white people, speaking for us… Let me quote your article, just very slowly — for meaning…oh look, balloons.
But really… good job.