The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

It’s hard to keep a straight face when watching romantic-drama Blind; a story about a neglected wife of a shady businessman who finds solace in the arms of a struggling blind novelist whilst her husband is in prison. Written for the screen by John Buffalo Mailer and directed by producer-turned-director Michael Mailer, it doesn’t really get any cheesier than this Hallmark-inspired melodrama, which struggles to find its tone for most of its running time, resulting in a scattered and a ridiculously cartoonish drama that is awfully hard to take seriously.

When her ruthless business man of a husband, Mark Dutchman (McDermott) is sent to prison after being incriminated in a business scheme by one of his partners, Suzanne (Moore in a one-note performance) is sentenced to one-hundred-hours of community service as a punishment for being a silent accomplice. She soon meets Bill Oakland (Baldwin being Baldwin only blind); a famous novelist who teaches part time at NYU, who relies on others to read out loud his student’s papers in a makeshift office located in a center that provides help for the sight-impaired.

Known for his demanding and somewhat defiant nature, Bill doesn’t have much time for nonsense which finds most of his helpers running away for dear life. All of that changes, of course, when Bill meets Susan – a woman who has forgotten how the other side lives – who gets appointed to him by the court. Naturally, as these things usually go, the two initially clash before eventually finding common ground to build their inevitable romance on. Meanwhile, Kyle (Lyles), a sophomore student obsessed with the writer, is also hoping to get some personal time with the author who as he soon learns, is not to be judged by his cover.

The biggest frustration of the film is trying to figure out whose point of view the story is being told from; is this a story about Bill’s personal journey of trying to get back on his feet after suffering a devastating loss? Is it a story about an unhappy wife with a douchebag of a husband who has seemed to have lost her voice? Or, is it a story about a young aspiring writer looking to learn life’s lessons from his one-and-only idol? It’s hard to say.

Messy in structure and tonally all over the place, the entire production – from the colour of the film to the choice of casting – is incredibly dull and lifeless. Moreover, the entire film, including the plot of the story is badly outdated and if we didn’t know any better, might as well have been filmed back somewhere in the late 80’s.

Cheesy and terribly clichéd, Blind is a hard movie to digest, let alone recommend. Forgettable in every sense of the word, you are probably better off getting your romantic kicks elsewhere.