1. Jondoe

   10

   great movie. anyone who disagrees is a blind fool. it shows how real men take care of their kids. also a great movie on learning how to be a father and getting to know your kid. i don't even want to get into the motivational and other aspects of the movie. great acting jobs all around.… Collapse

   • Helpful? 3 of 5 users said Yes.
2. VaiKelly

   8

   I gave this movie 8 out of 10, for the simple reason and premise that it is based upon a real story, and that the performances are strong and true to its overall content. Will Smith is NOT the revelation of this movie, it is his son, Jaden. Strange irony for me to say this, because Smith is one of the most talented actors/performers alive and is a personal favorite of mine. Director Gabriele Muccino hasn't done anything extraordinary, but has simply made an ordinary, real-life story extraordinarily uplifting. And he has his actors as well as Andrea Guerra's moving background score to thank. Probably disrespectful for me to say this, considering that a movie's success/failure depends entirely on its direction and concept. So let me retract my earlier line about the director! Smith's Chris Gardner might probably be the unluckiest guy in the world, as he runs around with what could safely be described as 'an object from outer space,' but does so with such urgency that even his own wife, played horribly by Thandie Newton, thinks it's a useless idea. Funny she should think that, considering she moved in with Chris in a new house because the objects (portable bone density scanners) once seemed highly potential for their future. Newton's Linda Gardner is a bit too unnatural and hurried for me. If she had reasons to be so cross and frustrated with Chris and their normal life, she probably could have done with a few more scenes, either shadows or memories from the past or even the present. But Linda felt a bit too hyper anxious and helpless. Jaden Smith doesn't disappoint in his movie debut - the kid can act! And what's more, he does it seemingly effortlessly. I wonder if Smith was just stunned and speechless during the outtakes, because sometimes, Junior Smith can be so impeccably natural. What moved me equally was the beautiful score by Andrea Guerra - it was just the foundation that the movie needed. It was calm, subdued, powerful, and emotional. When, in the scene where Chris is told that he's got a job and he gets out of the office to enjoy a rare moment of sheer happiness and even personal vindication, the background emphatic score lifts the spirit up as much as Smith's precise and wonderful performance does. All in all, it was a wonderful movie in life lessons. And lastly, before I forget, I enjoyed the Happyness part, the graffitti on the wall that Chris Gardner was so conscious and expressive about. Funny he should be so insightful and verbal about such typos when his own life was a train wreck going downhill! This is the magic of the movie - it is the painful irony of life, and the eventual joy of true hard-earned satisfaction in the pursuit of real 'happyness.'… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.
3. MarkB.

   5

   Horatio Alger meets The Bicycle Thief. Look, I'm as thrilled as anybody that Chris Gardner, the real-life figure on whom this movie is based, beat insurmountable odds to become a big-time stockbroker, caring for and feeding his little son (and sending him to what is apparently the world's crappiest day care center) while doing it. And I have no problem whatsoever with the critical acclaim and Oscar nomination that Will Smith has received for his heartfelt performance, although I can't help but wonder if Smith would've been as effective in maintaining such convincing screen rapport with child actor Jaden Smith if the latter weren't Will's own offspring. But this movie is so relentless in its apparent aim to make the audience feel as miserable (oh, excuse me, miserYble) as possible most of the way that the childish knock-knock joke that concludes the film, while not being all that funny in and of itself, got as big a reaction from my theater audience as the "bean scene" from Blazing Saddles normally would've...simply because it represents a change of pace, never mind how tiny, from two hours of punishment. I'm often a real sucker for good inspirational movies: I loved Akeelah and the Bee, The World's Fastest Indian, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, Gridiron Gang and the current examples Rocky Balboa and Freedom Writers, but all of those featured abundant moments of humor or joy to counterbalance the required scenes of hard knocks and heartbreak; conversely, I couldn't have wanted to exit The Pursuit of Happyness quicker if the theater had caught on fire! As the old blues song might say, if Gardner as depicted here didn't have bad luck he'd have no luck at all; he can't give away the bulky, outmoded medical devices he starves himself trying to sell to doctors, but that doesn't stop them from being frequently stolen; when given a crucial phone number to call for a job interview, he not only can't find something to write it down with, but people keep shouting other numbers at him while he's desperately trying to commit it to memory! After a while, this accumulation of obstacles reaches such a ridiculous, almost Pythonesque, red alert level that I actually found myself derisively laughing at it; callous as this may seem, my conscience is clear because the filmmakers seem to be fudging several crucial facts in order to artificially intensify the pathos. Apparently the real Gardner's son was an infant (not a preschooler) at the time, and apparently the Dean Witter brokerage firm didn't make Gardner and his 19 competitors do intern work for them for nothing, but paid them a small pittance...so if screenwriter Steve Conrad and director Gabriele Muccino are this willing to play fast and loose with the facts, then why should I automatically buy into their portrayal of Gardner's estranged wife as the biggest harpy on earth? I smell more than a whiff of Cinderella Man's fraudulent portrayal of the infinitely more complex than depicted boxing champ Max Baer as a one-dimensional sadist here; Conrad and Muccino are such enemies of fairmindedness and nuance here that they even make Thandie Newton (a very good actress) LOOK as unattractive as possible, even when she's down to bra and panties! But the worst aspect of The Pursuit of Happyness may well be the aftereffect that occurs down the road, as some of the same American corporations that a few years ago rocketed Spencer Johnson's book Who Moved My Cheese? to Number One on the bestseller lists by buying crates of it in order to convince their employees that being downsized is the best darn thing that could possibly happen to them begin doing the same with this movie on DVD, in essence to tell the rank and file, "Look, so what if the CEO's giving himself another raise and you a pay cut? Be glad we pay you to come to work at all !" If that's indeed what happens (and I don't doubt that it will), then The Pursuit of Happyness will make the long leap from simply being a bad movie to becoming an instrument of evil.… Expand

   • Helpful? 1 of 1 users said Yes.
4. Cait

   2

   Will Smith spends the majority of this film running around in a suit and thanking people earnestly. Very disappointing and way too cheesy. Cringeful in fact. That's 2 hours of my life I'll never get back. An awful film.… Expand

   • Helpful? 1 of 1 users said Yes.

See all 87 User Reviews