The Passion of Will Smith

The Pursuit of Happyness marks Will Smith's best performance as an actor since his first leading role on the big screen in Six Degrees of Separation. He may have landed an Oscar nomination once before for doing an eerily accurate impression of Muhammad Ali, but this was the first time in his career he's truly played against type, and it works beautifully.

Happyness (the misspelling is part of the story) is the story of Chris Gardner, a bone density scanner (don't ask) salesman whose fortuntes, at the beginning of the movie, are pretty much in a downward spiral. It is when he learns that he can improve his station in life (i.e. make more money) by being a stockbroker, his path for the next six months is set. He joins an internship at the Dean Witter brokerage where for six months, he will compete with several other candidates for the chance to be declared their new broker.

There's just one problem: as an intern he is not paid any salary, and unfortunately selling his machines gets progressively harder, especially when the IRS hits him for just about everything he's managed to make. As a result, he and his son Christopher (played by Jaden Smith, Will's real-life son, who is a revelation all his own) end up homeless, sleeping in shelters and train station bathrooms.

Of course, this is a feel-good movie, so one doesn't have to be a brain surgeon to know who will eventually beat out all of the other interns for that coveted job with the brokerage.

Still, the journey there is so excruciating, so full of cruel twists of fate that although the audience is aware (having in fact, informed at the very beginning) that this movie was inspired by true events, one cannot help but feel the hand of contrivance pop up time and again in the screenplay. There's a little silliness in the script that is called for, while other times it seems rather unintentional. It doesn't really matter whether or not it really happened, because as far as I'm concerned it's all in the telling.

This movie is billed up as a feel-good movie, but to my mind it plays very much like Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I don't know how many other people will draw this parallel, but in each stroke of misfortune that Gardner had to endure I saw the inordinate cruelty with which Gibson depicted Jesus Christ's suffering, the difference being that while, word for word, the Bible describes what happened to Christ, screenwriter Will Conrad presumably had a bit more leeway. That notwithstanding, he and director Gabriele Muccino pile on the pain and suffering for nearly two hours straight until both Gardner and the audience can barely stand it, at which point they finally offer up Gardner's moment of redemption.

The thing is, as with Jesus Christ's footnote of a resurrection in Passion, Gardner's success does pretty much nothing to change how terrible I felt after having been put through such an emotional wringer for something like ninety-nine percent of the movie. At some point I was practically groaning at how excessive all the things that were happening to him felt.

Fortunately for this film, Smith elevates it past its script and direction by suffusing Gardner with dignity even in the face of all of his travails. Although Gardner isn't a fountain of wisecracks throughout the movie, Smith still brings to him the charm that he has trademarked (and he does get a few good one-liners in besides). Not only that, but Smith and son Jaden play wonderfully off each other. I don't usually much care for child actors but this kid really knocks it out of the park for me.

At the end of the day, this is every inch Smith's movie, and his ninth or tenth career $100+ grosser. Forget Tom Cruise; THIS is Hollywood's biggest movie star. And he's a better actor to boot.