A Will and a way

Hard work prevails in one man's struggle to break cycle of poverty

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, December 15, 2006

It's tempting to view The Pursuit of Happyness as a vanity project for Will Smith. Smith, who appears in nearly every frame of the film, co-produced. He also cast his son Jaden to play his big-screen son.

On top of that, Smith tackles the kind of role that usually garners attention come Oscar time. He's portraying a man who suffers grave economic hardships (including homelessness) while taking care of his 5- year-old son and working as an intern at the investment firm of Dean Witter. Oh yeah, he's working for free, one of a variety of eager young men competing for a single job at the firm.

Inspired by the true story of Chris Gardner, who did make an improbable rise from destitution to riches, The Pursuit of Happyness (yes, the title is purposefully misspelled) manages to rise above its worst instincts. A vanity project? Smith's performance suggests otherwise.

His temples flecked with gray, Smith offers a strong and surprisingly muted depiction of a man on the edge of despair. And the scenes Smith plays with his son don't ooze with sentiment, which is not to say that the movie doesn't sometimes lay it on thick in attempting to inspire.

When we first meet Gardner, he's struggling to stay afloat. His wife (Thandie Newton) works two jobs, and he's trying to sell bone-density scanners to doctors. Chris spent his life savings to buy the machines, which aren't exactly a hot item. It doesn't take long for his fed-up wife to leave. Chris insists on keeping his son.

I have no idea how much the script by Steve Conrad respects the facts of Gardner's San Francisco- based story, but one suspects that the words "inspired by" should be taken seriously. And although it has been directed by Gabriele Muccino, an Italian, the movie hardly qualifies as a Bicycle Thief classic.

Still, Pursuit presents us with the escalating catalog of woes that befall Gardner - from having his machines stolen to having the government raid his bank account for back taxes to hurrying through his work so that he and his son can queue up at a homeless shelter. He has no desire to spend another night sleeping on a BART train.

Gardner paddles like crazy just to stay afloat, a task that keeps Smith on the run for most of the movie. He races to pick up his son at day care or to make an appointment. He's definitely living a life in which there's no rest for the weary. The scanners he carries (about the size of a sewing machine) are like anchors, weighing him down and tethering him to a no-win, treadmill life.

The dialogue makes it clear that the movie is an ode to the single-minded pursuit of dreams, and it all might have been a little less tolerable if the movie hadn't portrayed Gardner as whip smart. He impresses a Dean Witter human resources executive by solving a Rubik's Cube in record time. He's a great student.

The script might have done more to tell us how Gardner got off track, but it's reasonable to conclude that he more or less drifted into the situation in which we meet him in 1981.

If you're looking for perfection, you probably won't find it here. But you will find a story that shows what it's like to realize that all you have in the world is $21.33, and that you're about to be evicted from a motel that already represents a downward spiral in your life.

I left the movie thinking that a whole lot of folks in Gardner's situation can't do what he did. They can't break the cycle of poverty. They never get off the street. But this is the story of one man who made it, and Smith does him justice.

Robert Denerstein is the film critic. Denersteinb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5424