The Blind Side - A True Story

In today’s class we saw a movie called The Blind Side which is based on a true story. The story is about a black boy named Michael Oher, also called “Big Mike”. When Michael was a little kid, his mother was a drug-addict and his father was absent. Because of the family’s circumstances, the Family Services took control over his life, sending him from one foster home to another. When we meet him in the movie, he is homeless and is enrolling in a private Christian school to play football. At school, Michael gets a new friend called S.J Tuohy who is a lot younger than him. As S.J’s family sees Michael wandering around the streets at night, they pick him up and take him home. As the Tuohy family grows to love Michael, he gets his own room and bed in their house.

Even though Michael isn’t the best at school, it turns out that he’s got big protective instincts. No matter what happens, he always does whatever he can to protect the Tuohy family. At the field, Michael doesn’t get the hang of the game in the start, but as Leigh Ann Tuohy, the mother of the family, encourage him to use his protective instincts, he finally succeed. The Tuohy family is a white Christian family, and their friends think that this “little project” with taking care of the big black boy is ridiculous, but Leigh Ann is proud of the new member of her family and sets her friends straight.

As Michael continue to succeed on the field, several offers to play at university level comes up, but to be able to do this, Michael has to be better at school. The Tuohy family hires a tutor to help Michael, and his grades rises to the point where he is able to play for a university. Even though he has several offers, he ends up choosing the university where the father of the Tuohy family once played football and Leigh Ann once were a cheerleader. After choosing the university he wants to play for, a female investigator questions Michael to see if the Tuohy family forced Michael to go to their old university, so that they could benefit from that particular university. Michael gets suspicious about what the investigator said and questions Leigh Ann, but realizes that the Tuohy family is his family now and only wants the best for him and his future.

I really liked this movie because Michael was so easy to like because of his kindness and his protective instincts. I also liked the movie because it is based on a real story, and this makes it easier for me to relate to the story. To be able to do what the Tuohy family did for Michael is really fantastic, and it shows us that there can always be hope when people like them exists in this world.