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The San Diego Union-Tribune

AT THE MOVIES

There's nothing trivial about 'Pursuit,' a feel-good film with real heart

By David Elliott
MOVIE CRITIC

December 14, 2006

'The Pursuit of Happyness" is "inspired by a true story" and is, lo and behold, actually inspiring. One suspects that Thomas Jefferson, quoted in the movie, would have savored it.

Jefferson's Declaration of Independence words about happiness keep recurring to Chris Gardner (Will Smith). In the story Chris must, to find happiness, endure quite a pursuit.

Set in the early 1980s as the Reagan boom cooks, Steve Conrad's script is based on the actual Chris Gardner. He is a bright guy starting to feel some age, with limited prospects – he sells bone-scanning equipment to doctors but is often rejected, and before the movie's end we hate the boxed machine as if it were a hound of fate.

Chris sees a bunch of suits, mostly male, pouring out of the Dean Witter Reynolds brokerage firm (now Morgan Stanley) in downtown San Francisco. He thinks they look "happy," and wonders: Why not me? He does have an adorable boy, Christopher, but wife Linda is becoming a scarecrow of overworked anxiety – Thandie Newton has the thankless role, sulking and snapping.

They drop Christopher into a day care nest in Chinatown, and the cheapness of the place is one of many abrasions that finally drive Linda away. The rest of the story features father-son bonding, very effective because it's almost never pushed cloyingly, and because Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Will's son, fits like a kid glove.

Chris gambles, schmoozing his way into the trainee program for aspiring brokers at Dean Witter. But he can only survive the long tryout (unpaid in the film; the actual Chris got a small stipend) by selling the damn machines, which rarely sell. Now he's a solo parent, and his son misses mom and the apartment Chris couldn't pay for, and none of the chirpy suits at Dean Witter realize that brisk, affable Chris is scraping by on nerve and small change.

He has a Chaplin aspect, prone to bad luck and some bad choices. Italian director Gabriele Muccino gets some charm from bits like the Rubik's Cube, the lost shoe, even the furious cab driver, but nothing softens the pain of being down to $12.44 or living in a shelter. At rock bottom, Chris enlists his son's childish imagination to patch their spirits together.

For all its beauty, San Francisco can be as cold as any city for down-and-outers. Though the city tenderizes the story a little, we can feel the strain of Chris climbing the tall hills, and the pain of pitching accounts on the phone while wondering how to house and feed his son (the racial aspect is barely felt, though one suit treats Chris like new help at the mansion).

An endearing guy like Chris should, by the odds, have more friends or relatives as backup. But the story has firm human strength, partly because Smith shows credible weakness when he must. Always good in comedy, he became a truly significant actor with "Ali," and this wonderfully subtle, engaging but never drippy performance again deepens his range and appeal.

Tragedy is no option here, despite some vapors of it, and though the ending is expected it's also quite moving. This is one of the few American movies to deal with how people live and survive. It admires smart brokers but also feels for the many people down below, and we know that Chris will not claim his "happyness" by becoming a cold fish in a glass office.

© Copyright 2006 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. • A Copley Newspaper Site

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I cried like a baby at the end and the crowd applauded.

Deb