Friday, May 14, 2010

Moofies - The Blind Side

EXPECTATIONS: Sandra Bullock is easy enough to watch, but I expect I will absolutely hate this.

REALITY: I absolutely hated this.

The Blind Side tells the story of Sandra Bullock and her family of whiteys helping out the fat black kid who has nowhere to go by letting him stay in their house and become one of the family. Turns out the fat black kid is good at grid iron and becomes a sought after player by the NFL.

Firstly, it's kind of scary how racist this film is. It's based on a true story, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with a white family helping out a kid like this, but when it's put on screen this way a myriad of problems arise. Firstly, the only representation of black people we get in this film is a negative one. African Americans are seen as poor drug addicts who will amount to nothing without the help of white people. An affluent white woman decides that she wants to let "Big Mike" (a nickname that is sadly repeated extremely often for the first half of the film) live in her house. She babies him, reads to him, buys him clothes, and basically treats him in a caring but also extremely disrespectful and undignified manner.

Any 'cultural clashes' or conflicts of any kind are almost nonexistent. At one point Big Mike is taking whitey junior for a drive to buy a video game (that they didn't even ask if they could buy. Seriously, these kids pretty much demand that this new video game is out and they are getting it. Don't kids ask their parents for money anymore? Do rich kids just assume that their parents will give them whatever they want? I was wierded out by this little moment) and Mike isn't paying attention so there is a car accident. I'm all "Finally! Some kind of conflict!", but no. Junior is fine because Mike protected him with his arm, and whitey Mum isn't mad or anything. Ridiculous.

Bullock is the focus of the film, which is another reason I felt odd about The Blind Side. Mike is pretty much a blank slate for the entire film, representing something nice that a family did rather than being an actual character. There are some minuscule moments of conflict when Bullock's whitey friends have a go at her for her decision to adopt Mike, but Bullock's replies are completely focussed on herself. She's all "It's not what I teach Mike. It's what he has taught me" or some shit. What?!? He taught you that you can feel less guilty about being really rich by looking after a pushover black kid who hasn't robbed or molested you and is already in a private school and really good at sport? It's horrible.

Bullock won an academy award for this. I think that at some point it is possible that Bullock will star in a film that really pushes her comfort zone and she will wow viewers with her acting abilities, but I'm yet to see this. Her role in The Blind Side is yet another example of the "strong woman" gone mad. Bullock believes that she is right and no one can correct her. She is better at everything than everyone else (like coaching a grid iron team or raising a child) and no man is gonna tell her what to do, uh uh. She's basically a total fucking bitch and we're all supposed to applaud and laugh. Even the little shit whitey kid says a bunch of "cute" things, but really he's just being a little shitfaced brat who needs a parent to tell him to shut up.

I'm sure this film will make a ton of money when conservative church groups and American Fox news fans flock to see it on repeated viewings, but I couldn't stomach it. Even my lovely wife, who can sometimes sit through crap easier than me, was hating The Blind Side also. One last point; despite all my ideological reasons for hating this film, there is one unforgivable movie sin that The Blind Side commits: it's really, really boring.

1/2 a star.

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