Watching movies might sound like a sweet gig, but it isn't all fun and games.
The long lunches with Keira Knightley are nice, but I didn't appreciate Nicholas Cage holding my cat Huggins for ransom after I came down on National Treasure 2. Likewise, if Scorsese calls me at 10 a.m. for advice one more time, I am going to just lose it. Some of us work for a living, guy. We need our sleep. For Ms. Knightley's sake, if nothing else.
But there are upsides, too. I generally assume a bad-looking trailer is going to make for a bad movie. Simplistic, but it makes a lot of sense -- like Huggins always says, if you can't find 90 seconds of good material for an ad, how are they going to fill 90 minutes? Sometimes, though, a movie will catch you completely and pleasantly off guard, first by not sucking, and then by actually being pretty good. Sandra Bullock's already done this once this year with The Proposal; after being surprised again by The Blind Side, I think I'm looking forward to her next role.
-- Local show times, theaters.
Quinton Aaron may have been accepted into a private high school, but he's still homeless and alone until he catches the eye of Bullock, a strong-willed, wealthy, yet conscientious woman who takes Aaron into her family's home.
Intending to just give him a place to stay the night, she soon gives him a new family. Aaron's had a tough life and isn't the easiest kid to get to know, but given a chance, he may have a big future as a football star.
The Blind Side has enough cliches to choke a cliche-hating horse: a pretty, rich white woman taking in a poor but gentle black kid; a skeptical, judgmental community that thinks living rough is eating beef from Corpus Christi instead of Kobe; a spunky little kid who says things so darned the ninth circle of Heck will be ringing with his quotes for years. By all rights, I should have been barfing into my seat-neighbor's popcorn tub.
Instead, I was cutting a hole in its side and draining its buttery kernels into my feedbag, which is cunningly disguised as my other neighbor's purse. Because writer/director John Lee Hancock has the universal cure for obnoxious cliches: restraint.
Rather than bludgeoning us to death with what an ass-kicker Bullock is or how Aaron's massive size conceals an equally huge heart of gold, Hancock mostly just lets them do their thing. The Blind Side is based on a true story, and Hancock realizes he doesn't need to romanticize it with big dramatic speeches or exaggerated conflicts that could easily have made his film feel exactly like every other feel-good movie out there.
In skillfully getting out of his own way, the characters and their emotions arrive on their own terms. Same deal with its humor. Normally I hate kids -- yeah, kid actors too, now that you mention it -- but to my great confusion, I found myself laughing at some of the spunky moppet's lines instead of wanting to roll him up in a carpet and whack him against a telephone pole.
It could be too sweet for some. I wouldn't know, because my heart is cold and dense as a frozen Butterball. But The Blind Side never tries to cheat its way there, never tries to manipulate you. Funny and just a little thoughtful, too? Color me surprised.
Grade: B+