Smith shines in ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’

Something is just wrong with equating happiness and money. But no matter what glass ceiling, door or floor you look through, that is just the American way.”Pursuit of Happyness,” could have been a quicker capture. A guy leaving the theater even commented, “Couldn’t they have told that story in, like, half the amount of time?”

That said, the film was almost a tear jerker (on maybe three different occasions during the lengthy, two-plus-hour expanse) and certainly a fetching success story.No one can question it’s a ground-breaking performance by Will Smith and an interesting take on a truth-based tale of one lucky guy’s efforts in breaking out of the lower echelon of the socio-economic quagmire. And hopefully it was just circumstantial that the ultimate portrait of success was also one of … um, really stressed-out, suit-clad white guys.

Cheers to Smith for taking on such a solemn role, although his real-life child who played his son nearly stole the show. The two must do improv at the breakfast table. Seriously though, Smith’s performance may just launch him out of his set role – formerly known as the Will Smith experience.”The Pursuit of Happyness” wraps the heart strings (and the poverty leash) around Chris Gardner (Smith), a low-income salesman in San Francisco, who is trying to support Christopher – his 5-year-old – and his embittered wife, who works much harder than he appears to. Gardner’s daily job is attempting to sell an apartment full of the ultimate consumer toy … Not. What he’s trying to sell is a rare bone-density measuring device, a large mini-fridge-shaped object, that one character on the poor team (as opposed to the rich team; every character in the movie is either driving a Ferrari or homeless) mistakes for a time machine. Anyway, Gardner carts these objects all over the city and tries to sell them to doctors. Why these ice boxes with lights are Gardner’s answer to life’s golden boulevard is never quite clear, but it makes for a convenient recipe for failure in the money-making department.

So, the wife gets fed up with the landlord incessantly asking she and Gardner for rent they don’t have and blows town, leaving Gardner and Christopher to find a smaller apartment and live a life of full-blown destitution while Gardner pursues an unpaid internship at a major stock-broking firm. It must be said that Gardner’s industrial nature and ability to keep his suits clean for the office while he and his son live intermittently in shelters and public bathrooms is admirable. The dynamic of the father-son relationship is also touching, especially as Gardner provides his son with constant snippets of wisdom – like how to spell happiness – while never sleeping, studying for the big test at the end of his internship and trying to fix one last bone density machine so he can make a little of money in order to put himself and the kid up in a place with a shower. The big question at the end is certainly what happiness is to people. In Gardner’s case, we have to wonder if the greatest joy in his life is found in a high-rise building full of cube walls and furrow-browed suits screaming into phones. It should have been made clearer that this scenario for him is just means to an end. As it happened, though, how many of you wanted to see “Office Space” again after seeing this film?