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The Blind Side Reviews
Hancock’s movie feels like an overly schmaltzy Disney production. All the realism of the story has been replaced by heavy sentimentality and scenes that play to audience expectations.
Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 30, 2023
There's too much emotional manipulation and huge problems seem to get solved a little too easily for it to be 100 percent believable, but it is an entertaining movie anchored by two very good, but very different actors.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 31, 2021
The plot of uncommon human kindness and charity is a formula for box office success and reasonable entertainment, but the execution is incredibly conventional.
Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 28, 2020
The Blind Side is that rare formulaic flick that actually works.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 3, 2020
Issues of race and racism are not left on the side, though, and the onscreen chemistry that [Sandra] Bullock and [Quinton] Aaron score is a game winner from the get-go.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 11, 2020
It felt tired and clichéd and the frequent and obvious emotional button-pushing failed to ignite any real response from me.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 11, 2019
This is a horrid film, and I hated it, and while, I suppose, you can't argue with a true story, you can always argue with the way it is told.
Full Review | Aug 30, 2018
... I must say that I doubt I'd like the film as much had it not been Christmas and just a plain ole good family flick to see with my mom.
Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 12, 2017
[It] is all about the family's altruism and turns a blind eye to silent Michael, with father Sean offering up the excuse: "Michael's gift is his ability to forget." I'm not convinced but that didn't stop me from enjoying the film and admiring Bullock.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2017
The movie is done with crispness, vigor, down-home humor, and an over-all tang of good feeling, but the pushing of buttons is the work of extraordinary calculation.
Full Review | Jan 24, 2014
The movie is very familiar -- you've seen it all before -- but it succeeds at achieving its modest goals.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 24, 2014
As a fable about the power of giving, it hits pretty hard.
It's certainly a heartwarming tale and Bullock delivers a big, ballsy performance as the indomitable Tuohy - but Oscar-worthy? What were they thinking?
Full Review | Aug 2, 2012
Serves its purpose by making the audience tear up in some moments and cheer in others. It's a total button-pusher, but it does so in a very good way.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2012
Football may the thread that runs throughout, but the movie is much more interested in the tale of how Oher left behind a life of poverty, violence and foster-home despair to become a champ on the gridiron.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 30, 2011
A living tribute to fundamental Christian motivations, although the point is hammered home with an extraordinarily soft touch: Love thy neighbor.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 5, 2011
You're going to be crying by the end.
Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011
The Blind Side, which has reportedly made close to 200 million dollars, is based on a true story (the operative word is "based," of course).
Full Review | Feb 23, 2011
Sing it together with me my brothers, thank the Lawd for he created the white man that he might teach them po' negroes the value of good Christian chariddy.
Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Feb 3, 2011
While The Blind Side constantly threatens to deteriorate into sentimental saccharine, it never does. Bullock's accent grates at first, but she bonds well with McGraw
Full Review | Jan 31, 2011
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‘the blind side’: film review.
Sticking safely to proven inspirational sports-movie/fish-out-of-water formulas while holding the inherent sociological issues to the sidelines, the dramedy doesn't skimp on the crowd-pleasing stuff.
By Michael Rechstshaffen
Michael Rechstshaffen
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Knowing a golden character opportunity when she sees one, Sandra Bullock takes the proverbial ball and runs with Leigh Anne Tuohy, the honey blond spitfire of a well-to-do Southern wife and mother who takes in a homeless black teenager in The Blind Side .
She’s an irrepressible hoot in writer-director John Lee Hancock’s otherwise thoroughly conventional take on Michael Lewis’ fact-based book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game . The Bottom Line Sticking safely to proven sports-movie/fish-out-of-water formulas, the dramedy doesn't skimp on the crowd-pleasing stuff, but given the setup, there also was room for more thought-provoking substance.
Related Stories
Michael lewis on 'blind side' lawsuit: "studio system" at fault for paltry movie profits, 'blind side' subject blames film for nfl career decline: "i don't like that movie".
Bullock’s feisty performance should ensure solid midrange numbers, driven by a decidedly larger female demographic than what is usually drawn to gridiron fare.
Hancock, who added a thoughtful page to the sports-movie playbook with 2002’s The Rookie , goes for a decidedly broader attack here in his depiction of Tennessee’s Tuohy family and their head-turning houseguest.
When we meet up with Michael Oher (nicely played by Quinton Aaron), he’s a long way from becoming an All-American football star.
In fact, the outsized, introverted teen never has even played the game before when crosses paths with Bullock’s Tuohy one wet winter night as she and her family pass her son’s schoolmate on the street, braving the elements in just a T-shirt and shorts.
They take him in for the night and ultimately adopt the gentle giant, raising the meticulously plucked eyebrows of Tuohy’s affluent, decidedly nondiverse circle of friends, while grooming Oher to become an indispensable left tackle.
Along the way, it would have been nice if Oher had been presented as something other than essentially a large prop.
Not until the end of the film do we ever get a chance to really see what’s going on in Oher’s head — how he feels about being the chosen one plucked from the poverty-stricken projects of Memphis and thrown into this protected, nonliberal-leaning environment of privilege.
But it’s immediately clear who wears the designer jeans in the Tuohy household, and Bullock, who looks more than a smidgen like Kathie Lee Gifford here, goes the distance as an unstoppable, well-coiffed, force of determination.
Production values are nicely appointed, especially Alar Kivilo’s crisp cinematography and costume designer Daniel Orlandi’s pricey ensembles, which fit Bullock’s Tuohy to a T.
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