"Knight Thoughts" -- exclusive web content
Two Smiths: Will and son Jaden together in the elders latest bid for Oscar gold
Father and Son:
The Pursuit of Happyness
1-19-07 "Knight Thoughts" web exclusive
By Richard Knight, Jr.
When the Will Smith vehicle, his latest bid for Oscar gold, The Pursuit of Happyness opened late in December I wasn’t
particularly interested in seeing it.  And with the usual end of the year movie riches and my weekly quota of two or three reviews at
most – I was able to skip it.  Even when those “For Your Consideration” screeners started arriving I kept finding excuses not to pop it
into the player.  The based on a true story of a homeless black man and his son desperately trying to find a stake in the American
Dream in the early 80s just sounded like the kind of cough medicine movie I always strenuously avoid.  And besides,
Notes on a
Scandal, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Queen, Blood Diamond, and many others all vied for my attention.  Not to mention all those year end DVD
releases and soundtracks to listen to.  But finally, it was down to either another viewing of
The Queen (four times and counting) or
Happyness and the mood struck and into the player it went.

I’m not one to sit down willingly for another story of inspiration Hollywood-style but I will quickly add that once drawn in, I usually go
the distance and as these “up by the bootstraps” movie go, this one was okay.  Like one of those Lifetime “disease of the week” TV
movies,
Happyness has much of the same guilty pleasure appeal.  It’s easy to feel bad for a guy that has a shrewish wife in addition
to a raft of bad choices to contend with.  Nothing is going right for Chris Gardner, the character played by Smith, and things just get
worse and worse and worse.  

Finally, there in San Francisco in the early 1980s during the go-go Reagan-stockbroker-“Greed is good” years, Gardner decides that
becoming one of this elite corps will not only elevate him, but bring him the mansions and fancy sports cars that he desperately
yearns for.  But to get there – oh dear, it’s just hellish – and really there’s only his son (played by Smith’s real life progeny) to keep
him going.  Throughout Gardner’s troubles I kept hearing Thelma Ritter/Birdie Coonan’s acidic, cynical response to Eve Harrington’s
tale of woe – “Everything but the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end” running through my head – and I tried hard not to think
about the character’s single minded desire for money and its accoutrements above all else.  This guy’s dream is to make money.  
Period.  That’s inspiring?

What kept me involved, really, and gives the movie whatever appeal it has is that Smith is such a likeable personality and brings his
enormous audience rapport to the picture.  In other hands,
Happyness would be much less than that indeed without it.  Much more
cough medicine, much less Star Personality.