The Blind Side Reviews

Quite how Sandra Bullock deserved an Oscar for her one-note turn as bleached supermum Leigh-Anne is a mystery, since it transforms a potentially worthwhile character study into a grandstanding star vehicle.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Its superficiality keeps it from being the moving story it could have been.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

However obvious, The Blind Side is touching -- despite its habit of dropping major character notes into the melody without warning.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Oherâ(TM)s life is meant to make us feel good, and it mostly does. But how good we feel about his story is proportional to how blind weâ(TM)re willing to be about how itâ(TM)s told.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Writer-director John Lee Hancock has turned Oher's remarkable life into a Hollywood fable that trades difficult truths for easy clichés.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

What a drag that, one year into Obama's presidency, American films remain so careful about depicting black actors.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

It's a cute, touchy-feely crowd pleaser that wants nothing more than to wrap audiences in a warm holiday embrace. In a sense, it achieves that goal, but it is overly sentimental in a Lifetime movie kind-of-way.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

We never learn why Leigh Anne is so fearless, but Bullock is the force here. McGraw is an amiable anchor to her bull-by-the-horns portrayal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Upon seeing [Bullock's] Oscar-worthy performance is "finally!" followed quickly by, "Why the heck did it take so long?"

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

The filmmakers pay lip service to the story's racial undertones without ever really rocking the leaky boat.

Full Review | Original Score: B

A movie made up almost entirely of turning points and yet curiously devoid of drama or suspense.

| Original Score: 2.5/5

The movie glosses over the deeper issues of the tale, ones dealing with race, poverty, privilege and ethics, opting for the feel-good quick hit that makes the overall experience unsatisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

What makes The Blind Side a Thanksgiving treat is director Hancock's subtle touch and admirable refusal to yield to sports movie clichés, something he did previously with The Rookie and Remember the Titans.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

It's hard to overlook that while Michael's benefactors are white, the villains in the movie are black.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

'The Blind Side' may not make the All-American sports movies team, but it plays with plenty of heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

If someone were telling you this story, you might say, "Wow. That's something." Even so, the narrative is not quite big enough to bear the weight and significance that writer-director John Lee Hancock tries to attach to it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

If Frank Capra was still around, director John Lee Hancock might have had to fight him for the job.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Watching The Blind Side, I felt my emotions being stage-managed, but once or twice I got something in my eye.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Except for a few crude exchanges,The Blind Side is almost as squeaky-clean as an old Disney movie. Unfortunately, it can also be just as cute and condescending.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Director John Lee Hancock's only aiming for a crowd pleaser, and by not challenging the established playbook for inspirational sports dramas, he's no doubt got one.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/10

The Blind Side fumbles a remarkable, true story of an African-American product of the West Memphis projects who ended up at a Christian school and in the care of a wealthy white family, and then went on to professional football glory.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Some will doubtlessly dismiss The Blind Side as another example of a heroic white person saving a black victim but, although there is an element of truth in that perfunctory description, it misses the point.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Writer-director John Lee Hancock wisely lets the true story of Michael Oher speak for itself.

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What The Blind Side offers is a kind of liberal Hollywood version of conservative values: all rock-solid valor, all the time.

Full Review | Original Score: C

The movie's a pretty conventional feel-good sports drama in many ways. But Bullock and Aaron give it heart that transcends the genre.

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While it's possible to be enormously entertained and moved by The Blind Side, it's also possible to harbor a twinge of misgiving.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

It's just blinkered middle-class pandering at its most shameless.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

In every scene, Oher is instructed, lectured, comforted, or petted like a big puppy; he is merely a cipher.

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Missed opportunities and surface gestures aside, Hancock draws affable, energetic performances from all concerned.

Another uplifting and entertaining feel-good, fact-based sports drama.

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