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The Pursuit of Happyness

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For the famous phrase from which the title derives, see Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
For the band, see The Pursuit of Happiness.
The Pursuit of Happyness
Theatrical poster for The Pursuit of Happyness
Directed byGabriele Muccino
Written bySteven Conrad
Produced byWill Smith
Steve Tisch
Teddy Zee
Todd Black
Jason Blumenthal
StarringWill Smith
Jaden Smith
Thandie Newton
Brian Howe
James Karen
Dan Castellaneta
Kurt Fuller
Scott Klace
CinematographyPhedon Papamichael
Edited byHughes Winborne
Music byAndrea Guerra
Release dates
December 15, 2006
Running time
117 minutes
CountryUSA
LanguageEnglish

The Pursuit of Happyness is an Academy Award-nominated 2006 drama film produced by Overbrook Entertainment, Escape Artist, and Relativity Media, in association with and released by Columbia Pictures on December 15, 2006. While it is based on the true story of Christopher Gardner, a family man struggling to make ends meet, the film takes some liberties with Gardner's actual story. Starring Will Smith as Chris Gardner and Smith's real-life son Jaden Christopher Syre Smith as Gardner's son Christopher, The Pursuit of Happyness follows Gardner's struggles to break into the stock brokerage business as an intern, despite a rocky financial situation. The film was directed by Gabriele Muccino, an Italian director making his English-language directorial debut.

Plot

Template:Spoiler Set in San Francisco in 1981, the film centers around Chris Gardner (Will Smith), a clever yet unsuccessful salesman of expensive bone-density scanners. Chris invested most of his and his girlfriend's money into the scanners, which he eventually finds extremely difficult to sell (and difficult to keep from being stolen by hippies and bums). Despite Christopher's valiant attempts to help keep the family afloat, he is faltering; the rent is far past due, and his car is towed after Chris defaults on over a dozen parking tickets. His wife Linda (Thandie Newton) is unhappy and buckling under the constant strain of financial pressure, as her paychecks are the family's primary source of income. The only thing keeping the couple together is their five-year-old son Christopher (Jaden Smith).

One day, Chris meets a well off man (Geoff Callan) who reveals himself to be a stock broker for the Dean Witter brokerage firm. Impressed, Gardner seeks an interview with Dean Witter as an intern. Although he has no college training (Chris entered the US Navy after high school), his high-level math skills allow him to solve a Rubik's Cube puzzle in an impressively short amount of time, impressing Jay Twistle (Brian Howe), the person in charge of the intern hiring process, to the point that he arranges Chris an interview. Upon hearing that her husband is going "From salesman to intern - backwards", Linda is no longer able to cope with her unhappiness. She walks out on Chris, taking Christopher with her.

Unwilling to be separated from his son, Chris picks Christopher up from his daycare in Chinatown before Linda can. Chris complains about a sign outside the daycare center misspelling "happiness" as "happyness", hence the spelling of the film title. Linda is going to move to New York and wants to take Christopher with her. However, Chris insists that he wants to keep the boy, and Linda accepts. Just before his Dean Witter interview, however, Chris is hit with two setbacks: he is being evicted from his apartment in a week, and he is arrested for failure to pay his parking tickets. After being released the next morning, Chris runs from the courthouse to his interview at Dean Witter's offices, unkempt and dressed in painter's clothes. Nevertheless, he gets the internship, although he is chagrined to learn that it is unpaid.

Periodically able to sell all of the half-dozen remaining bone density scanners for quick money, Chris and young Christopher move into a low-rent motel, although Chris is still unable to pay his rent on time due to a notice about Chris' unpaid taxes and that the government took his last six hundred dollars from his bank account leaving only twenty-one dollars left. Undaunted, Chris pursues his Dean Witter internship as a way out of financial struggle: at the end of the six-month internship program, only one intern out of the twenty in the program will be chosen to become a full-time paid employee, and Chris is determined to be that one. Chris eventually finds one of his scanners in the hands of a bum who stole it. Chris tries to sell it to one last doctor to get some money but is upset to learn it is broken. The Gardners are evicted from the motel, and are forced to spend the night in a BART station public restroom.

The next morning, Chris and Christopher attempt to find themselves a shelter, eventually happening upon the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. The shelter operates on a first-come-first-serve basis, so every evening after work, Chris is forced to race across town to pick Christopher up, take the bus across town, and run to catch a place in line with the other homeless people. Chris continues to fix the scanner sacrificing time and sleep. Christopher of course does not like the situation (and on one occasion they lose one of his few toys; the Captain America doll on the film poster) but he is understanding, and still loves his father.

Chris places added energy into going out of his way to attract potential Dean Witter clients (including joining a potential customer at a football game; Chris and Christopher have a break by being invited in the customer's box). Chris finally fixes the scanner and sells it for two hundred dollars. In the end, Gardner's hard work pays off: he is awarded a full-time job with Dean Witter which causes him to choke up and hold back his tears. As he leaves the office after hearing the good news, he starts crying as he walks into a crowd of people. Chris runs to his son's daycare center and embraces him. The film ends with Chris and his son telling jokes to one another as they start walking down a street. This is when the actual Chris Gardner makes a cameo appearance. The film then explains that Chris went on to become a highly successful stock broker, eventually starting his own firm.

Template:Endspoiler

Production notes and reception

Thandie Newton and Dan Castellaneta also star in the film as Linda Gardner and Alan Frakesh respectively. Smith insisted that Italian Gabriele Muccino direct this movie because of Muccino's style in movies such as L'ultimo bacio and Ricordati di me.

The film uses real "street people" and real Glide church members and attendees as extras in some of the scenes featuring the church.[1] The church choir and band, The Glide Ensemble and the John Turk Change Band, may also be in the film. The Glide Ensemble soloists and band are professional performers.

The Pursuit of Happyness garnered good reviews from critics with a 66% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although Michael Medved gave Pursuit of Happyness four stars (out of four) saying "..not even the most jaded movie goers will be able to resist this film's emotional pull with an ultimately inspiring message about the implacable power of love and determination." [2] Jaden Smith in particular has been praised, due in part to "his natural, low-key quality" that is "both astounding and moving."[3] The film debuted at number-one at the box-office, making $27 million during its opening weekend and beating out such heavily-hyped films as Eragon and Charlotte's Web. It was Will Smith's sixth number-one opening in a row. It has made $162,587,000 as of 3/29/07.

Sloan Freer, writing in the Radio Times (UK) gave it (equivalent to "good" where 5 represents "outstanding"), by noting that although the acting belies "understated restraint", from Smith and his son in particular, actually watching the film as a detached onlooker is harrowingly distressing because the suffering of Smith's character is happening to "such a decent man". The review concludes that despite its faultless writing and execution, the film needed to be a little less agonizing to sit through, as experiencing the sheer harshness of Gardner's life detracts from the evocation of his evident strength of will.

Trivia

  • Speedcubing champions Tyson Mao and Toby Mao were hired as consultants to teach Will Smith how to solve a Rubik's Cube in two minutes.
  • In the series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will is shown solving the Rubik's Cube during an interview for Princeton University.
  • The Rubik's Cube in the film incorrectly depicts the Rubik's Cube manufactured in 1981. One can tell this by the black-and-white, logo "Rubik's Cube" located on the white, vinyl center-sticker of the white face (vinyl is no longer used for the stickers).
  • Will Smith actually grew the mustache he has in the film.
  • At the end of the film, the real Chris Gardner walks by Will Smith and Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Will Smith doing a double-take over his shoulder at him.
  • Dan Castellaneta, who voices Homer Simpson on The Simpsons, co-stars in the film as one of Gardner's superiors and requests a donut from Gardner.
  • Tyler MacNiven makes an uncredited guest appearance as the male hippie who stole one of the bone density scanners.
  • Throughout the film, Will Smith's character is often shown on the BART system, but even though the train network opened on September 11, 1972, it was not yet fully built out in its present form in the year the movie was set, 1981 (although at that time, all of the main BART subway lines within the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley were in daily revenue service).
  • In 1981, most of the buildings shown in the San Francisco Skyline shots were not completed yet.
  • In the film, Will Smith's character compares Dean Witter with Morgan Stanley, saying that the former is superior. In 1997, Morgan Stanley acquired Dean Witter and the two merged.
  • Although in the film Chris is selling Bone-density scanners the equipment for this technology was not invented until 1987, while the film is set in 1981.
  • Chris' childhood nickname was Ten-Gallon Head

Differences between the film and actual events

  • The Book has extremely detailed memories of Gardner's childhood unlike the movie.
  • Linda never existed. She is an amalgamation of Gardner's two previous wives.
  • Chris Jr. was only two years old at the time of the events of this film. In an interview on Oprah, he states that he has no recollection of this time period in his childhood. The only thing he does remember is his father always being there for him.
  • The Rubik's cube incident never happened. Smith came up with that idea, because he has always been fascinated with Rubik's cubes.
  • Chris Gardner never had a suitcase, but kept all his items within disposable plastic bags.
  • Gardner's internship was a $1000 monthly stipend, but he says "there was no salary" in the movie.
  • He spent ten days in jail for not paying his parking tickets.
  • The actual events and his homelessness happened over the course of a few years rather than a short time as shown in this movie.
  • He sometimes spent the night underneath his desk when the shelters were full.
  • Gardner quit his job as salesman before entering the stock broker training program.
  • Gardner's medical equipment was never stolen from him.
  • In the movie Gardner states that he is from Louisiana, but Gardner is actually from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. However, Gardner's book indicates that his father resided in Louisiana at that time.

Awards/Nominations

References

  1. ^ S.F. homeless earn paychecks for work as film extras
  2. ^ Michael Medved. "Audio review of The Pursuit of Happyness". Retrieved 2006-12-18.
  3. ^ Oscar pursuit of Jaden Smith would be natural by Claudia Puig, USA Today, December 22, 2006 section E1
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