ShareThisHollywood serves up a heaping of hope in the days before Thanksgiving, although one comes in a palatable PG-13 package and the other with a provocative, harrowing R.
"The Blind Side" and "Precious" focus on young people who, without the kindness of strangers and their own determination, would be doomed to horrid existences.
A look at how the movies stack up:
Fact or fiction
"Blind Side": Based on a remarkable but true story, chronicled in "The Blind Side" by Michael Lewis, who also wrote "Home Game," "Moneyball" and "Liar's Poker."
"Precious": Based on the novel "Push" by a woman named Sapphire. She has said Precious is a composite of many people she encountered as a remedial-reading teacher in New York's inner city.
Lost souls
"Blind Side": Michael Oher is a homeless teen, son of an absentee father and a drug-addicted mother. He seeks shelter and warmth in gymnasiums and elsewhere until the Tuohys open their home.
"Precious": Claireece "Precious" Jones lives with her mother, who is anything but motherly. Claireece is overweight, illiterate, pregnant for the second time (by her father) and abused by both parents.
Angels in the outfield
"Blind Side": Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, a wealthy Memphis, Tenn., couple, spot him wearing shorts and a T-shirt in winter and invite him into their house, hearts and lives.
"Precious": The education system fails this teen in so many ways, but it saves her through an alternative program called Each One/Teach One and a patient, kind teacher named Ms. Rain.
The actors
"Blind Side": Size, age and an innate reserve mattered. An aspiring actor named Quinton Aaron was living in New York when called to audition, after a nationwide search came up empty. Like Oher, he never knew his father, was the biggest kid in school and kept to himself.
"Precious": Harlem's Gabourey Sidibe was working as a receptionist and had just returned to her college psychology studies when she got a call about auditions. She initially wasn't sure if she would go but did and got immediate callbacks until hired. Her life bears no resemblance to her character's.
Super sales reps
"Blind Side": As she proved with "The Proposal," Sandra Bullock, who plays Leigh Anne, can sell a movie and the presence of a country singer by the name of Tim McGraw (as her husband) doesn't hurt, either.
"Precious": Thank executive producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry for throwing their weight and power behind a movie that could have easily gone directly to cable or the DVD-remainders bin.
Why you should see it
"Blind Side": It's an inspiring and true story that has a football fairy-tale ending and a timely reminder about charity. John Lee Hancock, the director of "The Rookie," the baseball movie with Dennis Quaid, made it and it is not schmaltzy.
"Precious": It's rough going, but you will be glad you saw it and can weigh in on the controversy. Is it one of the best movies of 2009 -- or the "con job of the year," as New York-based film critic Armond White insists? He suggests that Precious and her mother "share a Harlem hovel so stereotypical it could be a Klansman's fantasy."
Cringe-worthy moment
"Blind Side": Some audience members might be weary of a white family saving a young black man, but that's the way it happened. At the movie's start, it's a fatherly figure named Big Tony, an African-American, who takes his son and Big Mike to a Christian school asking about admission.
"Precious": Claireece's older child has Down syndrome and her nickname is "Mongo," a shortened form of "Mongoloid." Even if Claireece loves the girl, it's a stinging anachronism.
Oscar buzz
"Blind Side": Bullock, maybe, although this is the sort of solid performance in a commercial movie often overlooked.
"Precious": Mo'Nique, as Precious' mother, is monstrously good. If she isn't singled out of the cast, justice will not be served.
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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