I have, I am sure, mentioned that I see a lot of Wednesday afternoon movies, in an effort to avoid adding a random 60 miles to my weekly drive schedule. I may also have mentioned that I welcome attendees, because that is a lot of filmage to see by oneself. The upshot is that I will sometimes see something that isn’t at the top of my personal list, or even something I didn’t really want to. In this particular case, the movie I didn’t much wanna see was The Blind Side, by virtue of it being one of those “feel-good picture[s] of the year” that is pretty much guaranteed via that descriptor to be twee and annoying.
But, y’know, I’m a big enough person to admit when I’m wrong, and right here? I was wrong. Through an unlikely (but not unthinkable) series of events, a white Memphis socialite family meets and takes in a black teenaged ward of the state, and they each learn a lot about the ways the world works; also there is football. And it still sounds pretty twee, plus I don’t know how to say only a little bit about it; it’s either keep adding details until I’ve told the whole story, or the probably better option of knowing only that much or even slightly less than what I wrote above, as I did. The important part is, it was a genuinely sweet, sincere movie about how people are only different if we insist that they are, and about whether opportunity can triumph over fate. And no matter how twee this review may be, the movie really wasn’t.
I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever watched this genre of movie in my adult life without rolling my eyes. I hope I’m reporting accurately, instead of having somehow changed internally to become a sucker. That would be embarrassing.
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