moving this over from the Mike's Christmas Countdown thread, talking about
The Blind Side...
What do you say, re: the criticism that the black kid barely has 10 lines of dialog in the whole film and is portrayed as "a bystander in his own story", to quote one review I've read?
That's easy. Nothing could be a deader giveaway that the reviewers not only didn't read the book, but haven't even bothered to familiarize themselves with it. That is precisely how Michael Oher comes across in the book, which contains numerous quotes from his adoptive family, his teachers, coaches and tutors about how challenging it was to draw more than monosyllabic responses out of him.
And if you didn't know, Michael (
Moneyball,
Liar's Poker) Lewis was close friends with Sean Tuohy, the adoptive father, in high school. So he had actually known the family, including Michael Oher, before it occurred to him to write a book about it. In fact in the foreward Lewis talks about how he asked Tuohy for some advice on his next book topic, and Tuohy had to talk him into writing the book. Lewis was afraid it would be asking to much of his friend to expose him to the publicity undoubtedly in store.
It gets only a couple minutes at the beginning of the movie, but the book is subtitled:
Evolution of a Game, and if anything, Lewis’ analyses of the changes to NFL offensive & defensive strategy that eventually led to the emergence of the Left Tackle as such a highly-prized & highly paid commodity are just fascinating. Especially if you were a fan of Bill Walsh.
