'Blind's' true tale of football player instead focuses on star Sandra Bullock

"The Blind Side" has been called a crowd-pleaser, but movie chat spaces are already full of comments from a crowd that is not pleased.

They see something racially backward in this story of a rich white family who adopts, loves and educates Michael Oher, a homeless black teenager.

That the story is true (based on Michael Lewis' book) does not mollify critics, who say that Hollywood has selected this particular true story because it comforts the white bourgeoisie.

So, I guess that means it's a story we do not need to hear. And if you think Oher's story should be quashed, then by all means go tell him - he's 6 foot 5, 350 pounds and plays left tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, and should be easy to find.

He wasn't much smaller when, at age 14, a woman named Leigh Anne Touhy (Sandra Bullock) spotted him walking alone, at night, on the campus of the Memphis, Tenn.-area Christian school that her own children attended.

Oher (Quinton Aaron) had lost his temporary bed and was on his way to sleep in the gym - the Touhys offered him a couch in their gaudy McMansion, and that temporary arrangement became gradually permanent as the lovable, vulnerable Michael became part of the Touhys' lives.

The Touhys' monstrosity of a home is a strange icon in the film - it exists to be both gawked at and resented. The fact that Mr. Touhy (Tim McGraw) owns 70 fast-food restaurants does not seem sufficient to explain the fact that this opulence exists just a few miles from the shabby city neighborhood where Michael grew up, without a father, then without his drug-addicted mother, then without a home.

Director John Lee Hancock defuses class resentment by making sure that everybody in the family is as adorable as possible - Bullock as the nervy, Gucci-and-Chanel steel magnolia who makes Michael her personal project; McGraw as the good-natured hunk who stays out of her way; and Jae Head as the cute 10-year-old who hops around Michael like an eager puppy.

Leigh Anne takes charge of Michael's education - she gets him a spot on the football team, where Michael flourishes as left tackle, assigned to protect his quarterback's blind side.

Academics are tougher. Michael is essentially illiterate, and in the bottom 3 percent of most aptitude tests. But he has a native intelligence, absorbs most things he hears, and with a special tutor (Kathy Bates) works to get his grades high enough to qualify for college.

The movie's a little too long - padded by a college recruiting drama that features real coaches (Alabama's Nick Saban, Notre Dame's Lou Holtz) in fawning cameos that add nothing to "The Blind Side."

These scenes also prompt the Touhys to engage in some soul-searching - have they exploited Michael after all? Is the whole thing just some subconscious gambit to get him to go to their alma mater, Mississippi State?

It's too much to say that "The Blind Side" exploits Oher's story, but there should be more of Oher in the movie. I liked Aaron in the role - he has an open face and apostrophe eyebrows that convey astonishment at the posh Oz that becomes his home, but he has little else to do.

The actor who's showcased in "The Blind Side" is Bullock. There are about five too many scenes with the sole purpose of highlighting her character's feistiness and iron will.

"The Blind Side" is better when it's speaking to the heart, not the Oscar committee.