Blind Side Movie vs. Film

The Blind Side vs. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
      Prior to Sandra Bullock winning eight different awards, including the Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, for her part in The Blind Side, Michael Lewis wrote a New York Times Best Seller, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. While Bullock captured hearts alongside supporting actors Tim McGraw and Quinton Aaron, Lewis’ novel told the same story yet unfolded so much more. Both book and film deal with the upbringing of Michael Oher and his rags to riches story, but in entirely different ways. In the book Lewis explains why Oher’s position at left tackle is the most crucial in the NFL. Also, Lewis explains how the NFL has evolved significantly over the past two decades and what has caused such dramatic changes, where the film tells nothing of this.   In order to make the film appeal to a much wider crowd, director John Lee Hancock not only downplays most of Oher’s hardships, but also cuts out about half of the book, while explaining nothing about the game of football. The lack of detail in the film is often over shadowed by Bullock’s performance leaving the viewer satisfied and completely oblivious as to what flaws there are in the film.
Michael Oher, the subject of both book and film, was born in Memphis, Tennessee to an alcohol, crack-cocaine addicted mother and an incarcerated father who eventually was murdered in prison. Oher attended eleven different schools before his freshman year of high school, when he was found wandering the streets in the rain and brought in by an upscale white family, the Tuohys. The Tuohys eventually became his legal guardians and took him through high school, college and all the way to the NFL. John Lee Hancock’s film, although portrayed as a very believable story, leaves out vast detail in both Oher’s and the Tuohy’s lives. Controversies with the NCAA, Oher’s true personality as well as Michael Lewis’ explanations of the NFL’s evolution, are...