The Pursuit of Happyness

Plot

In 1981, San Francisco salesman Chris Gardner invests his entire life savings in portable bone-density scanners, which he demonstrates to doctors and pitches as a handy improvement over standard X-rays. The scanners play a vital role in Chris's life. While he can sell most of them, the time lag between the sales and his growing financial demands enrages his wife, Linda, who works as a hotel maid. The economic instability increasingly erodes their marriage, despite caring for Christopher Jr., their soon-to-be five-year-old son.

While out on a trip to sell one of his last scanners, Chris meets Jay Twistle, a lead manager and partner for Dean Witter Reynolds and impresses him by solving a Rubik's Cube during a taxi ride. After Jay leaves, Chris skips out on paying the fare as he lacks the money, causing the driver to angrily chase him into a BART station. Chris successfully avoids him by boarding a train, but loses one of his scanners in the process. However, Chris' new relationship with Jay earns him the chance to become an intern stockbroker.

The day before the interview, Chris begrudgingly agrees to paint his apartment for free to postpone eviction by his landlord for late rent. However, two policemen arrive to arrest Chris for multiple unpaid parking tickets. Chris is forced to spend the night in jail until the check clears the next day, complicating his schedule for his interview. He narrowly arrives at Dean Witter's office on time, albeit still in shabby, paint-splattered clothes. Despite his appearance, Chris still impresses the interviewers and lands a six-month unpaid internship. He is among 20 interns competing for a paid position as a stockbroker.

Chris' unpaid internship does not please Linda, who leaves for New York since she might get a job at her sister's boyfriend's new restaurant. After Chris tells Linda she is incapable of being a single parent, she leaves Christopher in Chris' care. However, Chris is further set back when his already diminished bank account is garnished by the IRS for unpaid income taxes, and Chris and Christopher are evicted.

With only $21.33 in his bank account, Chris and Christopher are left homeless and desperate; Chris is able to get a motel room, but the locks are then changed when he is unable to pay on time. They are forced at one point to stay in a restroom at a BART station. Other days, the two spend nights at a homeless shelter, in BART, or, if Chris manages to procure sufficient cash, at a hotel. Later, he finds the bone scanner that he lost in the BART station earlier. However, Chris found it damaged, yet he still manages to repair it by selling his own blood for money availability and after that sells it to a physician, thus completing all sales of his scanners.

Cast

Will Smith as Chris Gardner

Jaden Smith (credited as Jaden Christopher Syre Smith) as Christopher Gardner Jr.

Thandiwe Newton (credited as Thandie Newton) as Linda Gardner

Brian Howe as Jay Twistle

James Karen as Martin Frohm

Dan Castellaneta as Alan Frakesh

Kurt Fuller as Walter Ribbon

Takayo Fischer as Mrs. Chu

Mark Christopher Lawrence as Wayne

Chris Gardner as Walking Man in Business Suit (uncredited)

Geoff Callan as the Ferrari Owner

Production

Development

Chris Gardner realized his story had Hollywood potential after an overwhelming national response to an interview he did with 20/20 in January 2003. Gardner published his autobiography on May 23, 2006, and later became an associate producer for the film.

In order to create dramatic impact, the film artistically altered Gardner's life story by compressing several years' worth of events into a shorter period of time. Gardner makes a tiny cameo at the end of the film, walking past the fictional version of himself.

Casting

Chris Gardner initially thought Will Smith, an actor best known for his performances in blockbuster films, was miscast to play him. However, Gardner claimed that his daughter Jacintha said, "If [Smith] can play Muhammad Ali, he can play you!", referring to Smith's role in the biopic Ali (2001).

Music

Varèse Sarabande released a soundtrack album with the score composed by Andrea Guerra on January 9, 2007.

Also in the film are brief portions of "Higher Ground" and "Jesus Children of America", both sung by Stevie Wonder, and "Lord, Don't Move the Mountain" by Mahalia Jackson and Doris Akers, sung by the Glide Ensemble.

The Japanese version uses "Shiawase no Chikara" by Sowelu as its theme song.

Release

Box office

The film debuted first at the North American box office, earning $27 million during its opening weekend and beating out heavily promoted films such as Eragon and Charlotte's Web. It was Smith's sixth consecutive #1 opening and one of his consecutive $100 million blockbusters.

The film grossed $163,566,459 domestically in the US and Canada. In the hope that Gardner's story would inspire the down-trodden citizens of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to achieve financial independence and to take greater responsibility for the welfare of their families, the mayor of Chattanooga organized a viewing of the film for the city's homeless.

Gardner himself felt that it was imperative to share his story for the sake of its widespread social issues. "When I talk about alcoholism in the household, domestic violence, child abuse, illiteracy, and all of those issues—those are universal issues; those are not just confined to ZIP codes," he said.

Home media

The film was released on DVD on March 27, 2007, and as of November 2007, ADCCA – RPC Region 1 DVD sales (U.S./Canada/Bermuda) accounted for an additional $89,923,088 in revenue, slightly less than half of what was earned in its first week of release. About 5,570,577 units have been sold, bringing in $90,582,602 in revenue.

Reception

Critical response

The Pursuit of Happyness received a generally positive response from critics, with Will Smith receiving widespread acclaim for his performance. Film review site Rotten Tomatoes calculated a 67% overall approval based on 177 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Will Smith's heartfelt performance elevates The Pursuit of Happyness above mere melodrama." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle observed, "The great surprise of the picture is that it's not corny ... The beauty of the film is its honesty. In its outlines, it's nothing like the usual success story depicted on-screen, in which, after a reasonable interval of disappointment, success arrives wrapped in a ribbon and a bow. Instead, this success story follows the pattern most common in life—it chronicles a series of soul-sickening failures and defeats, missed opportunities, sure things that didn't quite happen, all of which are accompanied by a concomitant accretion of barely perceptible victories that gradually amount to something. In other words, it all feels real."

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called the film "a fairy tale in realist drag ... the kind of entertainment that goes down smoothly until it gets stuck in your craw ... It's the same old bootstraps story, an American dream artfully told, skillfully sold. To that calculated end, the filmmaking is seamless, unadorned, transparent, the better to serve Mr. Smith's warm expressiveness ... How you respond to this man's moving story may depend on whether you find Mr. Smith's and his son's performances so overwhelmingly winning that you buy the idea that poverty is a function of bad luck and bad choices, and success the result of heroic toil and dreams."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone awarded the film three out of a possible four stars and commented, "Smith is on the march toward Oscar ... [His] role needs gravity, smarts, charm, humor and a soul that's not synthetic. Smith brings it. He's the real deal."

In Variety, Brian Lowry said the film "is more inspirational than creatively inspired—imbued with the kind of uplifting, afterschool-special qualities that can trigger a major toothache ... Smith's heartfelt performance is easy to admire. But the movie's painfully earnest tone should skew its appeal to the portion of the audience that, admittedly, has catapulted many cloying TV movies into hits ... In the final accounting, [it] winds up being a little like the determined salesman Mr. Gardner himself: easy to root for, certainly, but not that much fun to spend time with."