I’m probably going to get roasted for this one. Mississippi State is probably not the place to advocate the Best Actress award for someone from a feel-good movie about a former star football player for Ole Miss.Admittedly, I was skeptical when I first heard about “The Blind Side,” which tells the story of Michael Oher, who now plays for the Baltimore Ravens, and the wealthy Tuohy family who adopted him. After all, Oher’s hardly the first professional athlete to come from a rough background.
But I’m a fan of sports movies, and since the book the film is based on was written by the same guy who wrote “Moneyball,” I decided to give it a chance.
I was blown away. And the reason the movie is great is Sandra Bullock, as Leigh Anne Tuohy, who brings the impoverished Oher into her home and gives him the family he’s never had.
Many MSU fans believe the main reason the Tuohys brought Oher into their lives was so they could steer the talented athlete to Ole Miss. While I’ve never necessarily been so cynical, I’ve always thought Oher’s sappy story seemed too good to be true.
Bullock’s performance convinced me otherwise, and that’s not an easy thing to do.
One scene that sticks out in my mind was when she realizes Oher has nowhere to stay and invites him to spend the night at her house. The next day, he tries to leave before everyone wakes up, and she insists he stay for Thanksgiving.
Regardless of what actually happened in real life, Bullock’s performance in the film gives me no doubt she genuinely cared for Oher and simply wanted to provide for him what everyone deserves.
I also enjoyed seeing her confront the racist and flippant attitudes of Tuohy’s friends, explaining football to Oher in the context of protecting a family, causing him to finally grasp the point of the game (an event which surely didn’t actually happen in real life) and threatening to kill the gang member who spoke to her disrespectfully (which, again, surely didn’t really happen.)
Just when the movie gets nauseating as Oher explains to the NCAA bureaucrat exactly why he wants to go to Ole Miss (something dumb about that’s where his family, and thus his heart, is or something like that), Bullock enters and gives an emotional speech to Oher about how she’ll love and support him and consider him a part of the family no matter where he decides to go to college, even if it’s Tennessee (the school she hates the most).
I’ll never be sympathetic towards anything Ole Miss-related, but that speech may be the closest I’ll ever come.
As a diehard MSU fan, I wanted “The Blind Side” to be a colossal failure, a box office flop that no one cared about. Oher is a big reason why Ole Miss was able to turn its fortune around in 2008 while we slipped back into the non-bowl ranks.
But after seeing the film, I couldn’t help but love it, and Sandra Bullock is the main reason why. For that, drawing someone like me into the movie when I so badly wanted to hate it, she deserves the Oscar for Best Actress.
The Best Actress race is considered to be essentially a two-woman race between Bullock and Meryl Streep. This is Streep’s 13th nomination for Best Actress and Bullock’s first.
Since winning the award for 1982’s “Sophie’s Choice,” Streep has lost 10 consecutive times. Bullock has made a number of great performances (such as 2005 Best Picture winner “Crash” or even “Miss Congeniality”), but she’s always snubbed.
Streep’s had plenty of chances. It’s time to give Bullock the Oscar she deserves.
Harry Nelson is the opinion editor of The Reflector. He can be contacted at
[email protected].