‘Pursuit of Happyness’ well-acted but predictable: review

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This article was published 13/12/2006 (7183 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

(AP) – There is never any doubt that Will Smith’s Chris Gardner will muddle through in “The Pursuit of Happyness,” that he’ll get a job, make some money, find a home and achieve the elusive, intentionally misspelled state of the film’s title.

After all, this is “inspired by a true story,” and after all, this is Will Smith. They don’t make movies about homeless guys who remain homeless by the time the closing credits roll – and if they do, they certainly don’t release them at Christmas.

It’s all predictable stuff. Yet Smith does make you root for him, because beneath that bad moustache and cheap suit he’s actually acting and not just playing the clown, something he hasn’t done in truly convincing fashion since’93’s “Six Degrees of Separation.” (“The Legend of Bagger Vance” was maudlin dreck and doesn’t count.)

The scenes in which he runs around San Francisco, seeking comfort and shelter for himself and his young son, have a convincing familiarity – probably because that really is Smith’s son, seven-year-old Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, playing the part. (He’s a charming, confident scene-stealer. Must be in the DNA.) And the elder Smith brings surprising depth and subtlety to a performance that easily could have been melodramatic.

At its core “The Pursuit of Happyness” is a good story – one that’s literally rags to riches, and didn’t need the many tweaks and embellishments that Italian director Gabriele Muccino and writer Steven Conrad have added. The night Chris and his son spend on the bathroom floor of a Bay Area Rapid Transit station, because they have nowhere else to go, is especially wrenching – and it happened, as shown in a “20/20” segment about Gardner that provided the spark for this film.

Chris’ wife and five-year-old Christopher’s mother, played by a harried Thandie Newton, is a fabrication, a composite of several people (and it’s hard to believe that she’s so unhappy that she’d just pick up and go and never contact either of them again). The Rubik’s Cube Chris solves easily (this being’81) is a total contrivance – a device that was made up to render visually the quickness with which his mind functions.

Solving it, though, impresses a honcho at Dean Witter, where Chris is competing for an unpaid internship at the start of the go-go ’80s. He’d been selling bulky, overpriced bone-scanning machines, without much success, and realizes that working as a stockbroker might be a better use of his gift for mathematic.

But everything goes wrong each step of the way. He’s late for a meeting, his car gets towed, his wife leaves. He gets robbed, arrested and booted from his apartment. How much bad luck can one guy have?

Nevertheless, he never loses it – and there are many moments in which ordinary mortals would and should. No matter where he and Christopher have spent the previous night, he shows up at the office on time every day and manages to keep up in his class, where he’s competing with’ other ambitious, aspiring stock brokers, all of them white.

That’s something else he endures with unflagging grace: the not-so-subtle racism that pervades his prospective field. Chris is the only one asked by his superiors to fetch coffee and doughnuts, to park someone’s car.

This guy is seriously too good to be true – even as the central figure in a (mostly) true story.

Two stars out of four.

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“The Pursuit of Happyness” – There is never any doubt that Will Smith’s Chris Gardner will muddle though, that he’ll find a job, make some money, secure a home and achieve the elusive, intentionally misspelled state of the film’s title. After all, this is “inspired by a true story,” and after all, this is Will Smith. They don’t make movies about homeless guys who remain homeless by the time the closing credits roll – and if they do, they certainly don’t release them at Christmas. It’s all predictable stuff. Yet Smith does make you root for him, because beneath that bad moustache and cheap suit he’s actually acting and not just playing the clown, something he hasn’t done in truly convincing fashion since’93’s “Six Degrees of Separation.” The scenes in which he runs around San Francisco, seeking comfort and shelter for himself and his young son, have a convincing familiarity – probably because that really is Smith’s son, seven-year-old Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, playing the part. And at its core “The Pursuit of Happyness” is a good story – one that’s literally rags to riches, and didn’t need the many tweaks and embellishments that have been added. Two stars out of four.