There are certainly some eye-rolling cornball moments in the trailer for The Blind Side.  “You’re changing that boy’s life,” says a friend of adoptive mother Sandra Bullock.  “No, he’s changing mine,” she answers back predictably. 

But The Blind Side is the opposite of a movie where the only good stuff is given away in the trailer.  While I knew which lines would make me roll my eyes, I don’t think I rolled my eyes any other time.  The Blind Side may be a corny story, but it’s also a true story.  And it’s a story well-told.

Football fans who watched the 2009 NFL draft learned the story of the Baltimore Ravens’ Michael Oher (and they later read it in the book The Blind Side: The Evolution of the Game by Michael Lewis).  Oher was an inner city black homeless teenager in Memphis who was taken in by a rich white family.  They get him involved in football, where his instincts to protect others and his overwhelming size make him an exceptional tackle.

It’s an exceptional story – almost hard to believe.

Sandra Bullock is Leigh Anne Tuohy, the mother who does the good deed of giving “Big Mike” a place to stay for the night and keeps finding that her work isn’t done yet.  She’s a spitfire – her family, friends and even the high school football coach do pretty much whatever Leigh Anne tells them to do.  Bullock plays her with enough charm that you don’t mind the attitude – she is doing well by this poor kid. 

After a while, she might drive us all nuts if it weren’t for the balance provided by her co-stars, especially Quinton Aaron as the gentle giant Michael Oher.  Big Mike has been through a lot, but he rarely lashes out and Aaron plays him as a likeable, decent kid.  This is not a tour de force for Bullock – we spend some time in Big Mike’s world before we even meet Leigh Anne, and Aaron is capable of carrying his part of the movie on his big shoulders.

Outside of newcomer Aaron, the biggest surprise may be country star Tim McGraw as husband Sean Tuohy.  The guy who lands on top of country music “hunk” polls plays a somewhat-doughy Everyman.  McGraw the country star rarely takes off his black hat, but here he’s sporting a bad haircut and is willing to just be a regular guy.   The real-life Sean got his money by owning dozens of KFC and Taco Bell franchises, so you don’t think of him as a rich snob.  Leigh Anne doesn’t have to bend Sean’s arm to get him to take in Big Mike, and McGraw is often a match for the more seasoned Bullock.  He even has a decent monologue while tutoring Big Mike that actually taught this reviewer something.  McGraw sings about being a “bad boy but a real good man” – in The Blind Side, he’s simply a decent man.

“Decent” sums up the film.  Director/writer John Lee Hancock has made his movie about a family a very good “family values” film.  Mike’s harsh life is certainly not side-stepped, but it’s not graphically on display.  There is actually very little violence in the movie or even any real over-the-top dramatic scenes.  The tension in the movie is within or about the family unit and is very real.  In less capable hands, it could have been a typical Lifetime Movie-of –the-Week chick flick.  But there’s enough humor, charm and even football to please a lot of people.

Big Mike and The Blind Side really did take me surprise.

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