Theatrical Review of The Pursuit of Happyness

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At the beginning of "The Pursuit of Happyness", a small disclaimer comes on the screen stating this movie is inspired by actual events. Of that, the audience can never have any doubt. At the end, this is reinforced with title cards explaining what happened to Chris Gardner and his son Christopher (played by Will Smith and his real life son Jaden): he founded his own brokerage firm and then sold it in what is described as a multi-million dollar deal.

And therein lies the biggest problem with this film, a sugary, ultimately feel good production designed to garner Oscar buzz and little else. The idea "The Pursuit of Happyness" is "inspired" by real events plays against it. As opposed to its thematically similar "based on actual events", this film has put a glossy sheen on everything that happens in an attempt to pull at every conceivable heartstring there is in the human body. In the end, though, it's all something we've seen done better-and more convincing-before.

We're told, through various flashbacks and voiceovers, that Chris and his wife Linda (Thandie Newton in a role that calls upon the same emotions as her stint on "ER") sunk their life savings into buying medical scanners-overpriced and slightly improved over other models-for Chris to sell as a traveling salesman. In the present, Chris is struggling at his job, Linda is forced to take double shifts at her sweat shop job and the two are constantly at each others throats. The lone bright spot in their lives is their son, Christopher. Eventually, when Linda leaves and Chris begins an unpaid internship at Dean Witter, he loses his apartment and backup hotel room. The father and son find themselves living in homeless shelters and train station bathrooms.

As I alluded to already, this is a deeply flawed film. At least part of the issue stems from the fact Chris is never shown to be anything but a saint stuck in a bad situation. He never takes responsibility for thinking the medical scanners would provide for his family. He never tells his wife or son that he's sorry for what he's put them through. Chris is this superman...a superman the audience is supposed to root for despite the fact he's not a character we can empathize with. There is no person, living or dead, who is this pure, this selfless and with this much gumption to keep trucking on, only breaking down once.

It's an actual impossibility. So every time Chris overcomes another obstacle (and there are obstacles on top of obstacles compounded with even more obstacles), the outcome is already known. The film seems to want to see how bad it can make the situation for Chris and Christopher, not to mention how much it can raise the father into the level of sainthood. One of the worst examples of this is a comment basically laying blame for everything that goes wrong to the duo at the feet of Linda. Something along of lines of she wasn't strong enough or she abandoned them. Whatever it was, it fits right in line with the decidedly anti-female and anti-Linda vibe in the movie.

The events of the film take place in the early 1980s, a time when minorities and women didn't comprise much, if any, of corporate America. "The Pursuit of Happyness" slyly wants to show Chris as the stereotypical black man fighting against the white oppression. The landlord who kicks him out of his apartment is a white man. The three people making the unpaid internship decisions at Dean Witter are all white. The people running the homeless mission are white. All the potential clients for Chris are white. And at every single turn they "conspire", as the movie would have us believe, to keep Chris down. There are even overt signs of racism in the training instructor who picks on Chris mercilessly.

Again, this all feeds into the feeling the movie has an ulterior motive, a racial undertone that is never actually mentioned. "The Pursuit of Happyness" is strangely unaffecting. Reports of audience clapping, crying and cheering are most likely nothing more than publicity plants. The movie hits every single emotional note it's supposed to and pulls every heartstring the human body has in an attempt to elicit some kind of emotion from the audience besides "is this over yet?". From montages that come straight out of weepy Lifetime movies to the tried and true "American" paradigm, this movie seems at least a decade too late. Do homeless people exist in our society? People who lose their homes, see their families dissolve and end up in the proverbial toilet bowl of the world? Of course, don't be naÔve. But if you're going to make this kind of movie and expect the audience to be emotionally connected to any of the characters, you have to make them human. Chris clearly isn't human. He can fix complex medical scanners he can run blocks upon blocks in San Francisco in work clothes, carrying all his world possessions with him he can schmooze just about anyone, even scoring invites to a 49ers football game from a man he doesn't know he can hatch plan after plan to pull himself out of train station bathrooms. But the one thing our society teaches us is to accept responsibility, as I mentioned before. Even a simple mention of Chris regretting something would have sufficed. It never happens.

I keep coming back to this idea of Chris as superman because the movie is so dependant on the audience feeling and identifying with the characters. Without that connection, were left with an overlong, over preachy, over hyped concoction of a film. Which isn't to say there aren't bright spots in the production. Will and Jaden Smith do have a rapport on screen which isn't hard to understand since they are father and son in real life. But the elder Smith is never able to step out of his personae AS Will Smith to inhabit this character. Either as a fault of the script or simply casting Smith, we never see him as anything but the Fresh Prince or Agent Jay. We still see these previous characters when we should be seeing this new one.

The other massive problem with "The Pursuit of Happyness" is that the dialogue feels like it comes straight out of a Hallmark card. At nearly every turn, someone-usually Smith-has something profoundly deep to say about dreams, ambitions or wants. An example? "You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can't do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can't do it. You want something? Go get it. Period." If he's as smart as the script wants us to believe, then why hasn't he put those witticisms to use? Chris is too stubborn and set in his ways selling the scanners to change at any point before the desperate times.

"The Pursuit of Happyness" refers to a line in the Declaration of Independence. Chris contends, in his Hallmark way, that it is the journey finding happiness which is the important thing, not the actual happiness itself. Happiness, it can be said, is a fluid thing. What will make us happy one day doesn't make us happy the next. There is a message here, but by the time the end of the film comes along, the audience is entirely ready to leave this manipulative and calculated movie-of-the-week behind. The best thing here is the actors, but with weak material we've all seen previously, there's not a lot even they can do for it.

"The Pursuit of Happyness" gets a 5 out of 10 for being a completely unemotional, formulaic and frankly boring affair that squanders the talent of Will Smith. If you need trite life lessons, go to your local Hallmark, pick up any card and save yourself 116 minutes of your life.

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