Toon-arama: Monsters University (2013)

Do you know what happens if you take a film like Revenge of the Nerds, Van Wilder or any other generic college film and you suck out all the sex and drugs and replace the characters with cute monsters? You get a surprisingly decent film, and that film would be called Monsters University.

Plot

Our story begins with young Michael “Mike” Wazowski (Billy Crystal) doing a factory tour of Monsters Inc., a company which scares human children because their screams can be converted to energy, which powers Monstropolis. Mike is so impressed that he knows what he wants to be when he grows up. He wants to be a scarer. (Mike will, of course, work for this company in Monsters Inc.)

Jump forward many years and Mike is a freshman on his first day at Monsters University. He’s enrolled in the University’s prestigious Scaring School so he can become a scarer. Once there, he meets James “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman), a blue-green monster with pink-purple splotches. Sulley comes from a renown family of scarers and has natural talent. He is, however, jaded and lazy because he’s always gotten along on talent alone. Mike, on the other hand, is not naturally scary and needs to work hard.

From there, we are shown the school. Conflict arises between Mike and some frats. And then disaster strikes. Mike and Sulley get kicked out of the Scaring School when they are unfairly failed by Dean Abigail Hardscrabble as retaliation for damage they do to her property. They have one chance to avoid this horrible fate: they need to win the Scare Games, a tournament put on by the schools frats and sororities. But to do that, they need to be in a frat and the only frat that will take them is the nerds of Oozma Kappa. They have no chance... or do they?

Good Fun

Monsters University is no Wreck-It Ralph, which I see as the current gold standard in animation, and it’s not quite as good as the original Monster’s Inc., but it’s an enjoyable film that is well worth seeing.

Two things really stand out about this film. First, Monsters University doesn’t include the sorts of hidden gags meant to appeal to adults. This story picks a rated-G level and stays there. There are no subtle sex jokes, no hidden messages, and no references to pop culture. Instead, the story relies on its characters and plot to entertain, and yet, that proves to be enough. The characters are likeable and you feel for them, and the “cartoon physics” they engage in are hilarious. Also, the story is truly a feel good story with just enough twists and turns to remain unpredictable from minute to minute even as you think you know how it will all turn out (hint: you don’t).

This raises the second issue. I’ve long marveled at how successful the generic college movies have been. Every one of those films just copies the others. They never add anything original. This film doesn’t either. Yet, it works. And not only that, it works despite the total absence of the usual adult content that seems to power the generic college films. What this suggests is that there is more to the generic college film than one would expect. In other words, there is something so universal about the conflicts inherent in these films that they appeal on that basis alone. It’s a bit like the Heroes Journey, which seems to appeal no matter what context it is found in.

So what are some of those conflicts? Well, there’s the issue of finding where you fit in in life. There’s the issue of maintaining your personality in the face of peer pressure. There’s the issue of proving yourself the equal or superior of self-appointed superiors who want to look down at you. There’s the issue of overcoming the rigged game. And finally, there’s the issue of coming together as a team to succeed at your goals.

Each of these is a universal theme that each of us has dealt with throughout our lives, and I think that makes the generic college story a strong story even as it wrongly seems to be about parties, alcohol and panty-raids. And Monsters University proves that point by showing how appealing a college movie can be without the alcohol and panty-raids.

In any event, this is a film you will enjoy. It may not be laugh out loud hilarious from start to finish, but you will like it throughout and you will find some very funny moments. It’s the kind of film that makes you happy that you watched it.

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Film Friday: Speed Racer (2008)

You may, or may not, have heard of a little bomb called Speed Racer. Directed by the Wachowski “brothers,” this film is a live version of the 1960’s Japanese cartoon of the same name. This film lost $27 million of its $120 million investment and it was widely panned by critics. But I’m gonna tell you, I like this film. What the critics hated about the film is that they couldn’t relate to it. Why couldn’t they relate to it? Because it’s an un-cynical film aimed at young boys.

** spoiler alert **

Plot

Speed Racer follows Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), a teenage Formula One racer. Speed drives the Mach 5, a white Formula One car with some special features. The car is owned by Racer Motors, which is an independent racing company owned by Speed’s parents Pops (John Goodman) and Mom (Susan Sarandon). Speed has a girlfriend named Trixie (Christina Ricci) and a little brother named Spritle, who happens to have a monkey. Speed is also possibly the best racer ever, but he’s not quite there yet because he still lives in the shadow of his older brother, Rex Racer, who died after standing up to race fixers. . . his name was smeared in the process too.

The plot of this one is simple. Speed is an excellent driver. He’s so good that he’s caught the eye of E.P. Arnold Royalton, owner of Royalton Industries, an evil conglomerate which dominates the racing world. Royalton sees racing as being only about money, whereas Speed sees it as being about glory and challenging yourself. When Speed rejects an offer to sell out to Royalton, Royalton sets out to destroy Speed. He even tries to have speed killed in the Casa Cristo 5000, a notoriously violent off-road race. Helping Speed is a mysterious figure called Racer X (Matthew Fox), who appeared right after Rex died and who drives exactly like Rex used to. wink wink

Over the course of a few races and the attempt by Royalton to get Speed to sell his soul, the story revolves around questions of honor, integrity, money versus sportsmanship, race fixing, cheating, and the importance of families. Naturally, the movie comes down to a final race between Speed and a childhood hero who is exposed as rotten, with Royalton’s company, Racer Motors, Rex’s reputation, and Speed’s life all on the line.

Just Kick Back And Enjoy It

Oh, where to begin. . . let me start by saying that in a technical sense, this movie is positively brilliant and it achieves its purpose perfectly. The idea is to take a rather stylized cartoon and turn it into a live action film without losing the spirit of the cartoon, but simultaneously creating a movie worth watching. The film does that perfectly. In fact, this is easily one of the best adaptations of a cartoon on film. Not only does this movie capture the heart and soul of the original, but it manages to bring the cartoon’s stylized ways to real life actors. This is the movie Dick Tracy wished it had been.

The film also wants to pull you into a totally unreal world and make it real for you. The film achieves that too. Indeed, this film is a virtual assault of color and sound and action. It’s so overpowering to your rational mind that it literally forces you to accept its reality. Its scenery is beautiful too, as are the sets. These are the kinds of locations you wish could be real so that you could live there. Additionally, the action is just stylized enough to feel real, yet unreal enough that your mind never doubts the physics of what you see because you know the physics are only suggestive. This allows the races to be exciting rather than boring because the cars achieve all kinds of interesting stunts that would never work in real life, but which you can accept because you understand this isn’t meant to be real.

Sounds great, right? So what’s the problem?

Well, that depends on who you ask. According to the liberal critics, the problem with this film is that it has “nothing of interest to anyone over the age of 10.” They also described the film as having an “undreamed of level of narrative incoherence.” In other words, they didn’t get it. Conservative critics attacked the film for being anti-capitalist. This is all wrong.

What’s going on here is that the critics couldn’t relate to the movie. They are cynics, and they are politicized to boot. Thus, a film that is entirely lacking in cynicism offends them. They cannot relate to a world where the good guy wears a white helmet and stands for loyalty, family and sportsmanship. They need corruption and anguish, which they mistake for drama. To them, the idea that a hero would have no flaws is just anathema.

Moreover, let’s be honest, most film critics are not really nice people. They make a living off of trying to be “bitchy.” So the idea of a feel-good film offends them – think of the last feel-good film they didn’t pan. Even worse, center that feel-good film around traditional male values, which are disdained in the media culture, and you have a film which is easy for these bitchy-boys to hate. To them, Speed Racer is the family friendly version of 300, a film which Roger Ebert dismissed because all the actors had muscles and they were “fascists.” They don’t like Hollywood putting out films with these kinds of messages where people are loyal, where young men are unapologetic heroes, and where sports and competition are seen as a worthy pursuits in and of themselves. Their world is the world of Friday Night Lights, where abusive coaches milk athletes for all they are worth for cynical reasons as the young heroes struggle against a fate that has doomed them to a life of despair... or the world of The Devil Wears Prada where vile hags snipe at each other as Roger Ebert touches himself.

At its core, Speed Racer is a true feel good story. Every time someone good is challenged, they overcome that challenge with the strength of their character and the help of their friends. These people are struggling to make a better world, a less cynical world free of rigged races, where races are raced for the thrill of the challenge to prove your own skill and mettle, not to make a quick buck or to try to live up to the abusive demands of failed parents. And Speed’s family is loving to the point of being downright corny. And you know what? It’s great to see that. These people are all capable, decent people without the slightest hint of an evil side, and that makes them easy to like. . . unless you’re a jaded media-type.

What about the complaint that the film is anti-capitalism? Give me a break. The villain is Royalton Industries, a conglomerate and a monopolist. Monopolies are not capitalism in action, they are the same thing as government power. Moreover, like most monopolists, this one got there by rigging races, cheating investors, and sabotaging competitors. They use connections with the government and threats of frivolous legal action and flat-out cheating to maintain their power against the nimble small business Racer Motors, which cleans their monopolist clocks. Royalton represents anti-competition, and his defeat is more an ode to free markets and competition than anything anti-business.

So here’s the bottom line. This film is not Citizen Cane. It’s not deep. It’s not nuanced. It’s not complex. It’s not Star Wars and won’t spark an entirely new genre. But this film deserves a second chance. Turn out the lights, put it on the biggest screen in your house, put all your cynicism aside, and just enjoy this film for what it is – it’s a film about a young man in an amazingly frenetic and flashy world who wants to make the world a better place. That make him a real hero.

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Film Friday: Real Steel (2011)

Sports films tend to be very formulaic, and Real Steel is no exception. This film has all the usual moments as the heroes make their way to the final-act fight against the all-power enemy controlled by the vilest of bad guys. Total cliché. But you know what? The formula works, and Real Steel handles it quite nicely. This was a fun movie.

** spoiler alert **

The Plot

Real Steel is a combination father/son film and a boxing film, done with robots. It stars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a former boxer who now owns a robot fighter. Kenton is broke and keeps tripping himself up at every opportunity by being rash. He accepts challenges too quickly and misses opportunities because he won’t stop to think. Kenton has a son, Max, who is being adopted by Kenton’s dead wife’s sister because Kenton doesn’t want him. Kenton wants money to make this happen and is, in essence, selling Max to the sister. Before this can happen, however, Max must spend a few weeks with Kenton. Hence, the father-son reconciliation plot is established.

Meanwhile, Kenton burns through all his money and his robots in a series of stupid mistakes made in bad fights. This results in Kenton and Max digging through a junkyard to find a new robot. Naturally, they stumble upon something special, the robot Atom. Max convinces Kenton to let Atom fight and soon finagles a match against the meanest robot of them all, the evil Zeus, designed by the nasty genius Tak Mashido and owned by the nasty heiress Farra Lemkova. We have our villains. During the fight, the voice control they use to operate Atom fails and Kenton must use his own boxing skills to guide Atom. And the winner is. . . well, I’ll let you find out yourselves.

The Formula

When I first heard about this film, I wondered what exactly they would do to make this film work. Boxing robots just isn’t naturally interesting to people because we can’t really sympathize with a machine that feels no pain and which doesn’t bleed. But the filmmakers were smart. Rather than just making this about the robots, they gave the audience the Max/Kenton reconciliation subplot, which they tied into Kenton’s robot winning. Thus, winning became important to the audience because they audience wants to see the father and son reconciled. Moreover, they cleverly found ways to make the audience prefer Kenton’s robot.

The reconciliation subplot is quite typical of father-son films. You have a son who feels that his father doesn’t care for him, and a father who must learn that his son is all he really cares about. So the film begins with the two characters about as far apart as possible to maximize the value of the eventual catharsis. In this case, Kenton is actually selling his son, and the son cares so little for the father that actually demands half the money! Could you get less love than that? Naturally, they are then thrown together and must learn to get along. Soon, they are arguing like actors in a buddy comedy as they slowly come to respect the other and finally to love each other. The moment where the respect turns to love is also punctuated with an excellent line when Kenton asks his son rhetorically what he wants from him and the son responds, “I want you to fight for me, that’s all I ever wanted!” This is a powerful moment in the film which will probably make you tear up and provides a satisfactory ending in and of itself, but the story isn’t done at that point. Instead, the fight with Zeus must still be fought.

Interestingly, the robot plot follows all the usual sports clichés, even though the robots aren’t human. The key robot, Atom, is presented as an underdog. It’s smaller and weaker than other robots. It’s not modern. In fact, they found it buried in the junkyard because no one saw any value in it. But it has one thing nobody realized. . . it can take a punch. That’s exactly what makes people like underdogs – they are seen as losers, but they have on special skill nobody cared about before. And being able to take a punch is something everyone respects.

Following the classic underdog storyline, Atom is laughed at by everyone until it wins its first fight. After that, it immediately becomes a crowd favorite, though the experts continue to laugh. This is sports populism and is common in sports stories. Each fight then plays out like every other film fight or every wrestling match, with the overmatched good guy brought down and nearly beaten before it suddenly discovers a reserve of will power and rises up to triumph over the opponent. Hulk Hogan became world famous doing this in every match he fought. Interestingly, the director even gives the sense that it is will power, rather than simply mathematics, which allows the robots to continue because the humans are cheering them on to stand back up and keep fighting. This is an important, but subtle, trick to humanize the robots.

Opposite the underdog is Zeus, the bad guy robot. Again, Zeus is the classic bad guy caricature. He’s made to appear larger than all the other robots, which makes him seem both unbeatable but also like he has an unfair natural advantage. He also wins his early matches in ways that seem unfair to the audience, such as when he knocks the arm off Kenton’s prior robot and then pummels the helpless robot into oblivion. Moreover, he was created by Tak Mashido who is presented as the arrogant, “hip” scientist who is too self-absorbed to even grant interviews and who disgustedly boasts that this challenge is beneath Zeus. Zeus’s owner is someone you dislike as well. She’s Farra Lemkova, an extremely beautiful, but cold rich woman who openly proclaims that she has spent whatever it took to buy a winner. This flies in the face of what people consider “fair” about sports, and is another example of sports populism. Zeus is primed for a fall.

Now, in truth, there is nothing evil about these villains. They don’t cheat, they don’t steal, they aren’t trying to kill Kenton or harm his relationship with his son, but they are presented a sufficiently arrogant that you won’t like them. What’s interesting about this choice of villains, however, is that they are also bland because they don’t do any of these things (cheat, steal, etc.) which allows the story to focus entirely on Kenton and his son rather than the machinations of the upcoming fight. This keeps the bond between Kenton and Max strong because the story doesn’t leave them for long stretches of unneeded subplots.

Finally, there is Kenton. Kenton is the perfect example of the modern Hollywood loveable fake-“loser.” He’s a great looking guy with a clean background and a heart of gold. He’s surprisingly capable of getting his hands on large amounts of money as needed. But he keeps failing because he’s rash and he lacks the ability to express himself to the people who love him. Both of these flaws will be solved through the relationship with his son, as his son teaches him the value of thinking through his decisions and shows him how to open up. The film then finishes with the perfect touch of redeeming Kenton’s lost career. Before the robots came along, Kenton was a professional boxer. But the robots replaced humans and human boxing ended. This is shown to be a sore spot for Kenton which makes him question his self-worth. But at the end of the film, Atom’s voice control is broken and Kenton must lead Atom through the fight with his own boxing moves. Kenton’s “outdated” skills save the day.

All of this may sound sentimental and it absolutely is, but it works extremely well. Despite the heavy-handed themes, the dialog is light enough that you never feel like you’re being hit in the face with the manipulation and the story is overall quite entertaining and fast paced. The actors have good chemistry too and the effects are excellent. But most importantly, the story feels inspiring. In every way, this film is just like a normal sports film like Rocky, despite the presence of robots, and it really does work.

I recommend this one.

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Film Friday: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

With Christmas just around the corner it’s time for a holiday film. There is no more quintessential Christmas story than Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” This story is so perfect that it’s been adapted at least 22 times in film and dozens of other times in other ways. So why is my favorite version the Muppet version? Read on. . .

The Plot

The story should be familiar to all. Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine) is a money lender and a rotten man. He’s nasty and mean- spirited to his employees and unbelievably cheap. In fact, he’s so mean-spirited that his one loyal employee, Bob Cratchit (Kermit the Frog), must beg him to give the employees the day off for Christmas. Bah humbug!

On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of his former business partners, Jacob and Robert Marley (Statler and Waldorf). They have been condemned to an afterlife in chains for their evil deeds, deeds which are shared by Scrooge. They have come to warn Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts who will show Scrooge the error of his ways.

These ghosts include the Ghost of Christmas Past, who shows Scrooge that he was once a decent man, the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows Scrooge how miserable he is compared to others who value families over money, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who reveals that Scrooge will die unlamented and his miserliness will lead to the death of Tiny Tim. Naturally, Scrooge changes his ways and the story ends happily.

Why The Muppet Version Is The Best

There are many fantastic version of this story. The 1951 version is excellent as is the 1984 version with George C. Scott as Scrooge. Bill Murray gives us an excellent modern version in Scrooged. Even the most recent Doctor Who had a nice adaptation of this. But of them all, the Muppets are the best. Why?

Different types of stories require different methods of storytelling to be effective. Alien would not have worked as a musical. Ghostbusters would not have worked as a drama. And A Christmas Carol works best as a fable, not as a drama as it is typically portrayed.

The goal of a fable is to impart certain lessons or warnings to the audience. This is done by a narrator who talks directly to the audience, explaining the motivations of the characters and their flaws, describing their mistakes, explaining the consequences of those mistakes, and then summarizing the lessons learned. It’s like a legal brief presented with puppets.

Dramas, by comparison, have none of this. Instead, they require the audience to draw its own conclusions from the actions and words of the characters and the consequences of the plot. Moreover, characters in dramas must come across as real before we can accept their plight and find their stories interesting. Characters in fables do not. In a fable, the only “real” person is the narrator who tells us the fable to impart some point. So long as the narrator entertains us sufficiently, the story is a good one without regard to how true the details of the story seem. Because of this, fables can be told in parts, i.e. vignettes, and we can simply be told of necessary changes in the characters or their circumstances between scenes. Dramas, on the other hand, must demonstrate such changes.

A Christmas Carol is, at its core, a fable. It is the moral of Scrooge’s failings and how he came to save himself. It is a series of vignette, each of which affect Scrooge differently and Scrooge has significant growth from scene to scene which is not shown in the plot. Thus, the best structure for telling this story is the fable structure, with a narrator to walk us through the story, point by point, and explain how each segment of the story, i.e. each vignette, affects Scrooge. Further, Scrooge is too one-dimensional to be a “real” character. This is intentional. Scrooge is an archetype of our worst, greediest, miserly natures, and he works best when we see him as such -- as part of ourselves rather than as a real person to whom these events transpire.

This is why the Muppet version is the best, because they treat this story as a fable. Gonzo acts as Dickens the narrator. Caine brilliantly provides the wide mood swings needed to be an archetype. And the Muppet players provide important levity and breaks to let us digest each scene before we move on and to distract us enough to let us think sufficient time has passed for Scrooge to undergo the personality changes needed. George C. Scott’s version may be excellent, but it is a drama and it lacks these critical elements which connect us to the heart of the story.

Finally, let me add two things. Michael Caine is an incredible actor. He never disappoints and he doesn’t disappoint here. Indeed, Caine does something brilliant. By soft-pedaling Scrooge’s cruelty and retaining his sense of humor, though he has misdirected it in cynical directions, Caine plays Scrooge not as a cruel man who must change his nature, but as a decent man who has lost his way. This connects us better to Scrooge than prior versions because (1) it is harder to connect with a truly cruel Scrooge because none of us wishes to see any part of ourselves as cruel, and (2) it is easier to believe a return to our better natures than a fundamental change of character.

And lastly, the Muppets deserve tremendous credit for playing this film “straight.” Specifically, the Muppets are adept at blending their antics into the film so you’re never distracted from the film. Too often when a comedian is brought into a film, they become a distraction (e.g. Robin Williams, Robin Williams, Robin Williams) as they turn their time on screen into an advertisement for themselves. Not here. The Muppets do the things you love about them, but they do them quickly and within the confines of the storytelling. Thus, there are no breaks in the story where you feel like you’re about to watch a couple minutes of a generic Muppet routine jammed into the film.

These are all brilliant choices which put this version ahead of all the others.

So what are your favorite Christmas films?

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Film Friday: The Blind Side (2009)

The Blind Side is an enjoyable film, which I highly recommend. It’s heartwarming, it packs a truly positive message, and it’s probably the most conservative film I’ve seen in decades. So it won’t surprise you that liberal critics hate it: “it’s racist!” Yeah right, what isn’t? Let’s discuss.

** spoiler alert **

The Blind Side involves a rich, white, conservative, Christian, Republican family who take in an abandoned black teenager. Through their loving efforts, they help this teenager get through a private Christian school, become a football star, and get a scholarship at Old Miss. This is based on the real-life story of Baltimore Raven Michael Oher, though not every part is accurate. The title, The Blind Side, refers to his football position, left tackle, which protects the quarterback’s blind side. The film is well-shot, well-paced, and will easily bring people to tears, but in a good way.

1. Yep, It's Manipulative, But Less Than Normal

One of the criticisms made against the film is that it’s manipulative. Duh! Of course it is, but it’s surprisingly subtle compared to most of what comes out of Hollywood today. For example, Michael must overcome various hurdles, such as a drug addicted mother, a borderline retarded IQ, the resistance of teachers who think he can’t learn, a lack of socialization, a lack of trust, racism, and a drug dealer who wants to hook him on drugs. But each of these hurdles is underplayed rather than overplayed. Moreover, we don’t get any of the cliché moments you normally get, e.g. where Michael runs outside into the rain crying that he’s not good enough or where a clichéd enemy tries to make him fail or where the mother (Sandra Bullock) falls to her knees weeping melodramatically. Ironically, the same critics who attack the film for being manipulative, also complain that Bullock remains too composed throughout the film and should have periodically wept like she’d just found a room full of dead puppies.

These same critics also whined that the story was sanitized: the white family was shown to be nice and happy and their Christianity wasn’t hypocritical. Oh heavens! Those darn teachers actually tried to help Michael rather than sabotage him! That never happens! Michael is made out like a giant teddy bear. Unbelievable!

The most obvious response to this is that the critics really need counseling. These critics, like many big-city liberals, smugly see Americans as alcoholic, racist, hatemongers, who date-rape their girlfriends, beat their oppressed wives and harass gays while hiding a plethora of sexual perversions. This may be the norm in New York City or Los Angeles, but it’s not what you find in the rest of America. What you find in the rest of America is pretty much what you find in this film -- people who aren’t perfect, but who try their best. Moreover, show me a film that doesn’t idealize. Does anyone really expect that everything good shown in a film must be balanced out with something bad? And if that’s the case, then why don’t liberals make this same complaint in films with liberal heroes? And don’t forget, this is a true story, were they supposed to make bad things up just to be “fair”?

2. No, It’s Not Racist

What really upset the critics was that The Blind Side didn’t fit their views on race. Almost every one of them suggested the film was racist:

● “The so-called ‘feel-good’ film functioning as a well-timed balm for the conflicted soul of white America. But rather than a clear-eyed look at the disparity between upper-crust suburbs and a cross-town ghetto, we get gloss of the highest order.”

● “It's so clichéd and so patronising and there's more than a whiff of racism.”

● “Institutional racism as inspirational melodrama, it's regressive entertainment, our very own Triumph of the Will.”

This is why the critics gave it a 53% rating. But the public didn’t buy that and gave it a 90% rating. They also spent $309,208,309 on it. You shouldn’t believe the critics either.

To liberals, the racism begins with the idea that a rich, white woman can educate a poor black kid. The very concept offends them. What’s worse, some liberals now object to allowing whites to adopt black kids, something they nonsensically claim is “genocide.” Moreover, Michael is shown becoming a happier, better person as he learns whitey’s ways, another racist idea in liberal eyes. They also think it’s racist that Bullock’s friends and family accept her decision to take in this black kid; several called this is a “whitewash,” i.e. failing to show the real racism liberals assume must be present is evidence of the director’s racist intent to hide the truth. They also see racism in the lack of racism in the teachers, because they know the reason black kids do poorly is that racist teachers pretend black kids can’t learn (see Waiting for Superman). . . coincidentally, the liberal belief in lowering standards for blacks actually is premised on such a belief. It also offends them that the black characters are all bad, e.g. Michael’s drug addicted mother, a black man who abandons Michael, a drug dealer, a lazy bureaucrat, and an evil NCAA woman who wrongfully accuses the family of taking Michael in for the sole purpose of helping their favorite college. In other words, they are offended because the whites are too good and the blacks are all bad, and that’s racist in their eyes.

Of course, this is all crap. The problem lies with the critics, not the film. The critics want to believe that whites are racists and there are no bad blacks, except when they are forced to be bad by white oppression. Thus, they see the inclusion of bad blacks and the failure to highlight the secret white racism as evidence of racists trying to cover up their racism. But that’s twisted, and it tells us much more about what lurks in the hearts of these critics, than what might be hidden in the frames of the film.

3. One of the Most Conservative Films In Years

Finally, let me explain why this is one of the most deeply conservative films in decades. For starters, the family who take Michael in are conservative, Republican Christians. . . when was the last time Hollywood let that happen? And unlike most Hollywood portrayals, they are not obsessed with money or imposing their religious beliefs. In fact, they are a genuinely nice family. Moreover, they take Michael in because they feel a moral obligation to do so. Compare this with how Hollywood normally portrays Christians as hypocritical about their beliefs in charity and responsibility, or against the liberal view that charity derives from forcing others to pay for good deeds through government dollars.

Further, the film constantly makes the point that family is vital. We see this in the support both parents provide Michael from helping him with school to socializing him to giving him emotional support. And at the same time, we are shown how children are destroyed and left to fend for themselves in the world of drug addiction, single-motherhood with multiple baby-daddies, and ghetto culture which disdains education and personal responsibility.

The school also provides a plethora of conservative themes. The admission committee is swayed by the idea that good Christians would help Michael because it’s the right thing to do, not because they would profit by it. The teachers never lower their expectations for him -- in fact, that’s criticized as the reason he has such problems, because the public schools just passed him along. And they also are very flexible about finding nontraditional (read: not union approved) ways to teach him. There’s even a great NRA moment. And throughout the film, we are shown that hard work and responsibility are rewarded and reliance on others is not. Indeed, everything you see offers a conservative theme. (See my article on what makes a film conservative.)

Conclusion

The Blind Side is a heartwarming film every conservative should love. It’s the kind of film conservatives complain that Hollywood doesn’t make anymore. The story is touching and has a great message. The people are decent. And its values are thoroughly conservative. This doesn’t sit well with liberal critics who want to see a slam on white southern racists, but who cares about them? They need to sort out their own inner demons before they’re worth listening to. In the meantime, see the film. You’ll like it.

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