Movie and Television Reviews

I check out movies.com to see what's playing. Sometimes, I read the reviews by Dave and Dawn. They're the type of reviewers whose suggestions normal people would be wise to inverse. I've called out Dave before. This time it's Dawn.

The new movie, Blind Side, is ruined, according to Dawn, because it's racist.

Racist? You mean it doesn't like black people? No, it says that we should help people and the main character decides that she wants to help a black person. What's the problem with that? Aren't we supposed to help people? Well, Dawn thinks black people shouldn't need help:

If the movie is to be believed, he was little more than a big, lovable pet that wealthy suburbanites Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy (Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw) literally picked up off the street and brought home like a stray cat. If this sounds more than a little offensive, then you have a lot more sensitivity than the makers of The Blind Side.

You mean Dawn is some cold Ayn Rand self-help evangelist? No, I'm guessing she's a liberal and believes in mucho government programs to "help" the poor. She probably wants middle-class people to pay for poor people's health care (taking the indigent into a hospital is like taking in a stray cat, no?).

For people like Dawn, impersonal charity is better because then you don't have to thank people, some of whom may be (gasp!) conservative Christians! Eek! Imagine having to thank Sarah Palin for anything:

"Props? We need a shinier halo for Ms. Bullock." Bleached blonde to play the real-life Mrs. Tuohy, Bullock is predictably feisty with a thick Southern accent, all the better for delivering the almost unbelievably clichéd dialogue (when someone tells Leigh Anne, "You're changing that boy's life," she responds with the predictable, "No -- he's changing mine"). Except that we don't see any growth or change in Leigh Anne -- at film's end, she's the same conservative Christian, hard-charging Tennessee belle, no better or worse or different than she was at the beginning. We are supposed to see her as a white savior, canonized for stepping out of her rich soccer-mom life to uplift a downtrodden black man, and any uplift you may feel at watching The Blind Side comes at the cost of pure racism.

So, there you have it. She gives the movie a "D+" because the wrong people are giving charity to people who should be getting it, presumably, from the government. No doubt if "Blind Side" was about how community organizers empowered a community to shake down banks and tobacco companies, she'd have given it an "A+."

One more thing: Blind Side is a true story. The helper and helpee are still alive. Is Michael Oher resentful for being treated like a toy? Does it occur to Dawn that being offended for somebody who is still alive and can speak for himself is, well, offensive?