Happyness Brings Buckets Of Tears To Viewers

Will Smith and 8-year-old real life son Jaden Smith look lovely together but their movie, loveliness aside, twists, jerks and wrenches the tears out of you.

“The Pursuit of Happyness” is one man’s persistent attempt to make life for his young son and himself comfortable. Based on a real life story, the movie depicts the agonizing journey of one man, from utter poverty, to the much desired (and deserved) prosperity. Will plays Chris Gardner, a single father struggling to make ends meet in ‘80s San Francisco.

Chris has been selling portable bone-density scanners to hospitals and clinics - a piece of equipment no longer necessary for these institutions and is slowly sinking into destitution. The mother leaves husband and son to get a better job in New York and Chris is left as the 8-year-old’s sole caretaker - and care he takes.

He decides to compete for an internship in a stock brokerage firm, having 19 other rivals that work overtime, while he rushes to take his son out of day-care. The two survive through such horrific experiences as being penniless, homeless and living on the streets. But they survive.

What’s really unpleasant though is that the struggle is prolonged throughout the better part of the movie – the worries, the bad luck, the unfairness of it all, it just goes on and on. Father and son convey a strong warm bond, but its weepy effect is inescapable. And the viewer watches and feels despair grow and watches and feels despair grow….

It’s beautifully filmed and the message that a father will sacrifice himself unflinchingly for his offspring is also beautiful (and beautifully portrayed by Will Smith) – but the misery presented in the rest of the movie is hard to bear.

Father and son move from their apartment to a motel room and subsequently spend several nights in a men’s room in the subway; Chris Sr. is late for a crucial meeting, his car gets towed, he gets robbed….. isn’t that just a tad too much though?

And through it all, he goes to the office every day, arriving on time and keeping the pace with his class and teaching Chris Jr to tenaciously pursue his dreams.

The screenplay is written by Steve Conrad and is closely inspired by the real Chris Gardner’s autobiography. “Pursuit to Happyness” is Italian director Gabriele Muccino’s first American motion picture.

And in case you’re wondering about the odd spelling in the title: Chris is bothered by the spelling mistake present on a mural outside his son’s day-care center. The wall bears the Declaration of Independence's phrase about man's inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The misspelling, “happyness”, annoys Chris as he wants his boy to learn things correctly. It is also his great wish – to be happy.