1
The Pursuit of Happiness
锛堝綋骞哥鏉ユ暡闂級
2006
With a title like The Pursuit of Happiness, you expect the characters to get to the promised land. They do,
but if the journey matters more than the destination, this is a movie to skip. The Pursuit of Happyness is
long, dull, and depressing. It expands into two hours a story that could have been told more effectively in
one. This is not the feel
-
good movie of the season unless you believe that a few moments of good cheer
can redeem 110 minutes of gloom. Sitting through The Pursuit of Happiness is a chore. Downbeat movies
aren't inherently bad (in fact, many are powerful), but this one provides artificial characters in contrived
circumstances.
How
is
it
that
movies
"inspired
by
a
real
story"
often
feel
more
fake
than
those
fully
embedded in the realm of fiction?
Will
Smith
has
generated
Oscar
buzz
for
his
portrayal
of
Chris
Gardner,
the
real
-
life
guy
whose
rags
-
to
-
riches story forms the basis of the movie. (Impoverished guy becomes capitalist poster boy.) While
it's fair to say that this is one of the best straight performances of Smith's career, it didn't blow me away. In
and
of
itself,
the
acting,
while
effective,
is
not
Best
Actor
material,
but
it
wouldn't
surprise
me
if
the
movie's
prestige
factor
and
Smith's
popularity
earn
him
a
nod.
Meanwhile,
his
female
co
-
star,
Thandie
Newton, isn't going to be considered for any award. Newton spends about 90% of her screen time doing an
impersonation
of
a
harpy:
screeching,
bitching,
and
contorting
her
face
into
unpleasant
expressions.
Smith's son, Jaden, is okay as the movie's child protagonist; it's unclear whether his occasional deficiencies
are the result of his acting, Steven Conrad's writing, or Gabriele Muccino's direction, but there's not much
personality behind the cute features and curly hair.
Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is down on his luck. It's 1981 San Francisco and his self
-
employed business of
selling portable bone density scanners isn't doing well. His wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), does nothing
but yell at him and give him a cold shoulder, and the lack of domestic harmony is impacting the disposition
of his beloved son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith). That's when Chris' life turns into a country
song. His wife leaves. He is evicted from his home. He goes to jail, neither passing GO nor collecting a
much
-
needed $200. He gets hit by a car. He is robbed. He makes his son cry. He alienates a friend over $14.
He gets to spend a night in the cleanest public restroom in the history of public restrooms. But there's a
bright spot, although you need a dark
-
adapted eye to find it. Despite having no experience, Chris applies to
enter an internship program at Dean Witter. He would appear to have no chance to get in until he amazes
the head of the program (Brian Howe) by solving the Rubik's Cube puzzle in the back of a taxi cab.
It's a blessing that the movie doesn't use a stock villain to impede Chris' herky
-
jerky trip to the top, because
that
would
have
tipped
the
movie
into
the
empire
of
the
unwatchable.
However,
the
lack
of
a
strong
conflict makes the two
-
hour running length seem very long. Thankfully, there's also not much in the way
of overt melodrama, but that could be a byproduct of having characters who are not deeply realized and
have narrow emotional ranges. It's tough to connect with Chris and his son. Although they are played by a
real
-
life father and son, there's no chemistry between them. We're constantly told how desperately Chris
loves Christopher, but it takes a long time before we begin to buy it. Most of the time, Christopher seems
like an annoying piece of baggage that Chris drops off at daycare when he has other things to do.
The film's most compelling scenes are those that show Chris struggling to enter the rat race. Granted, this
is
no
Glengarry
Glen
Ross,
but
it
shows
the
pressure
these
salesmen
are
under
and
how
important
the
contact lists are. In the overall scheme of things, however, these sequences are background noise. They are
neither plentiful nor lengthy. The movie spends more time following Chris on his futile sales rounds for the
bone density scanner than it does accompanying him during his broker training.
The moral of the story is as trite as they come: don't let anyone convince you to give up on your dreams.
Disney animated films have been doing this better for decades. The Pursuit of Happyness concludes with a
caption that tells us what happens to Chris after the end of the movie; it promises a better story than the
one we have just watched. The film is also marred by a persistent (although not verbose) voiceover that
adds nothing to the story while frequently jerking us out of the experience of watching it. I don't need Will
Smith telling me: "This part of the story is called 'riding the bus.'"
This
is
the
English
-
language
debut
of
Gabriele
Muccino,
who
has
made
a
name
for
himself
in
Italian
cinema.
The
Pursuit
of
Happiness
has
the
kind
of
slow,
drab
tone
one
occasionally
associates
with
a
director
raised
outside
of
the
Hollywood
system.
What
can
be
an
asset
in
some
circumstances
is
a
detriment
in
this
one.
The
Pursuit
of
Happiness
isn't
enjoyable,
and
its
meager
pleasures,
including
the
eventual "payoff," aren't enough to justify the unrelenting misery. The Pursuit of Happiness is competently
made and gets lots of the details right, but when it comes to the emotional core of the story, it loses the
pursuit and misses the "happiness."