Now - in writing this - I fully & freely admit that I don't know much more about The Blind Side than I've picked up from the trailer, but The Blind Side just seems so disgustingly over-simplified and sappy—and let's not forget -  racist. What's that you say?  How can this movie about uplifting an impoverished black man possibly be racist?  Well,it plays the same old tired "magical African American friend" card, first called out in Time Magazine some 10 years ago.  

The Legend of Bagger Vance, Driving Miss Daisy, The Green Mile. Time and time again, we are forced to sit through films where the black characters are just "blank slates" - no real character there.  Hollywood seems to think that making them be silent, complient, and big-hearted companions to our white heroes, they are presenting positive racial images.  I beg to differ.  I see Morgan Freeman's "Hoke" in Driving Miss Daisy as just an updated version of "Mammy" from Gone With the Wind.  It's shameful and we as a society should know better. 

What's worse, is that the presence of the "magical" black man almost always is there to prop up our white hero who is usually the "Bigot with a Heart of Gold." We see it in Remember the Titans (another formulaic film about blacks and football which makes white people feel good about themselves) and The Blind Side appears to be no different.  Apparently at the end, Sandra Bullock's character asks her husband if she's a "good person" to which her husband gives her a resonding "yes!"  No complexites, just strike up the crescendo!  (I think Sandra's going to learn a little something about racism... and a little something about herself!)

You see, Hollywood loves the notion that blacks need the charity of white people to succeed.  The Blind Side seems to take it one step further even - not just any white people will do in this case - wealthy, Christian, football-loving white-folk are here to save the day. In The Blind Side, the  family literally picks him up from the streets during a rainstorm, like a stray.  They give him his first bed, they give him support and take on his racist bullies for him - and this gentle giant simply goes along for the ride, thankful and happy for the opportunities being provided for him.  As I understand it, in real life, the transition wasn't quite so seemless.  The Blind Side just offers no reality, no conplexity, no real searching into the charcter of Michael and what it meant to live his life or make the adjustment to living with this new family.  Someone get Spike Lee on the phone, stat!

 (And the irony of admitting my prejudice against this film while decrying its racism?  Yeah, I get that too.  Sue me.)