Monday, Nov. 23, 2009

Screening of The Blind Side a hit with football coaches, players

Scores of football players lined up outside one of AMC Studio 30’s main auditoriums Monday night and not a single one had paid for a ticket.

Olathe South, Olathe East and Olathe Northwest lettermen jackets dotted the line, which wrapped around a corner and down the movie complex’s massive hallways several hundred deep. Basehor-Linwood, Shawnee Mission East and SM West jackets also were frequently spotted.

The free evening at the movies was part of the promotional run-up to Friday’s nationwide opening of “The Blind Side,” a Disney feature film about Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher based on Michael Lewis’ book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game.”

And by every measures, the screening was a smashing success.

“I had already read the book and it was exactly like the book,” Hawks senior quarterback Carter McEntee said. “I thought it was great.”

Falcons coach Jeff Gourley took his sons to the show, while Ravens coach Todd Dain attended with his oldest daughter, Andie, 10, who is a fifth-grader at Meadow Lane Elementary.

“I thought it was a great movie,” Dain said. “Not so much about football, but about all the things that young man went through.”

The consensus after watching “The Blind Side,” which details a homeless Oher being taken in by a well-to-do Toughy family and his subsequent emergence as an NFL-caliber offensive lineman, was that the movie transcended football.

“We stood around there are talked about it afterward, and the kids were inspired by it,” Gourley said. “The comments I remember hearing were along the lines I heard somebody say it made them appreciate what they had.

“Most of the kids in our community are doing OK. They aren’t like Michael Oher, growing up in poverty and carrying around their spare clothes in a plastic bag. It’s not a fight daily just to survive. I think some of them realized that. And maybe they already noticed, but we get so caught up in what we don’t have that we forget sometimes all that we do have.”

Presumably intended to be an uplifting movie for kids — it is a Disney flick after all — “The Blind Side” hit the mark with those watching Monday.

“Everybody loved it. I mean, it was a football movie and we got free tickets,” McEntee said, “but it’s definitely up there with other top football movies like “Remember the Titans.” It’s an inspiring story.” It was also surprising in some respects.

“It was a lot funnier than I think I expected it to be,” Dain said. “You could tell some of it was part Hollywood, but you could also tell the parts that were real.”

The attention to detail impressed Gourley, both as a parent and football coach.

“It also showed how hard he had to work just to get where he wanted to be,” Gourley said. “You can be a big body and be a stud, but the movie showed that even with all that talent you have to have the work ethic and the desire to get better to go with it. It took time and effort for him to become a good football player.” The message might be to mature for kids just starting school, but it makes for a fine family outing, Dain said: “Absolutely, it has a solid message about doing what’s right and seeing the big picture about things.”

Ultimately, it’s not even really about football at all.

“I’m sure there’s a million stories like that, where the kids turns out to be a teacher or a newspaper reporter,” Gourley said. “And you don’t make movies out of that stuff, but it was intriguing to see.”

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