Tag Archives: Jae Head

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On The Couch #29: The Blind Side

Back during Oscar season, I really wanted to watch The Blind Side. But as soon as the Oscars aired, my drive to catch the nominees I hadn’t seen yet dropped dramatically. I had already seen the ones I was very interested in, which left The Blind Side and the movie I will probably never watch, Precious, to fall by the wayside.

I was in Cape Cod this past week on vacation. After a long day of driving, I looked forward to doing something low key our first night there.

Enter: The Red Box. I haven’t had much experience with these rental-DVD vending machines in the past. A friend once showed me that you can look up what’s in a particular Red Box on the internet, which I thought was amazingly cool, but outside of that, I had never used one myself.

I thought it would be difficult to find a movie that my mom, dad, brother, his fiancé, my girlfriend or I hadn’t see already (sorry Youth in Revolt), would want to see (sorry Repo Men), and was family-appropriate (sorry The Crazies). Somehow none of us had seen The Blind Side.

I didn’t realize The Blind Side was based on a book by Michael Lewis until a credit popped up on the screen saying so. Before that, I thought Sandra Bullock’s opening monologue sounded like it was written by a sports writer and not a mom. Turns out it was.

Sandra Bullock was good in The Blind Side, but it’s her character’s young son who steals the show. Jae Head as S.J. Tuohy is so energetic and cute that he should be an honorary Culkin.

If they make a Kathie Lee biopic, this picture alone should get Bullock the part.

Another highlight was seeing the cameo appearances of numerous college coaches, playing themselves at the schools they were coaching at the time. I’m not the biggest fan of college football and could only recognize a couple of them, but I’ve always enjoyed people who aren’t actors playing themselves.

The real life Michael Oher wasn’t too happy with the movie because it portrayed him as barely understanding football before joining his high school team. I can understand his frustration here. But every Hollywood biopic is going to take liberties with the real lives of the people involved, so I guess that was to be expected.

Little know fact: Sandra Bullock was originally cast to play Cyclops in X-Men. Contract disputes caused her to be replaced by James Marsden.

The Blind Side is entertaining. There was surprisingly little football in the first hour of the movie, but the last 20 minutes is pretty much all football. If anything, it’s a good way to spend a couple of hours with your family during a night in Cape Cod.