TV - Movies
What The Blind
Side Doesn't Tell
You About The
True Story
By NATASHA LAVENDER
Squeezing the first 18 years of a person's life into a two-hour biographical movie is pretty difficult. This was true for "The Blind Side" which oversimplified the true story of Michael Oher, and he has a few issues with the movie about his early life.
"The Blind Side" gives the bulk of the credit for Oher's rise from poverty to football star, to the Tuohys. While Oher's athletic abilities, football instincts, and determined personality depicted in the film were accurate, in reality, many people from different parts of his life provided the support and opportunities he needed to achieve athletic stardom.
Oher also resented the film's implication that he was unintelligent, rather than, as he stated in his biography, "a kid who had never had consistent academic instruction and ended up thriving once he got it." According to Oher, the greatest help that the Tuohys offered him didn't come in the form of football tutorials (he was already playing the sport), but their ability to take care of his most basic needs.
Oher said that it was the stability that the Tuohys provided for him that allowed him to thrive and grow into the person he's become. To the credit of the film’s creative team, the ‘09 film shines a spotlight on the Tuohys' efforts to provide Oher with more clothes, food, and shelter, but rewriting his football education turned the focus away from the greatest ways that his adoptive family helped him.