Will Smith in the Pursuit of Happyness

"The Pursuit of Happyness" is the latest movie by Will Smith, who seems to continually improve himself as an actor and takes more varied roles in an attempt to make sure he is not pigeonholed as a sci-fi action hero. In this film he takes the roll of loving father Chris Gardner in a troubled family that breaks apart when his wife leaves him. Money problems abound for the salesman, and he manages to charm his way into an unpaid internship where only one of twenty individuals will ever get a paid job. Chris and his son deal with being broke, homeless, and struggling in San Francisco.

This movie is a touching true story of Chris Gardner, who really was homeless with his young son when he decided to go after the internship in an attempt to make a better life for him and his son. Will Smith plays this role well, especially in that he doesn't sugar coat it. At no point do you believe that he is not a loving father, but at times he rushes, and yells at his son, and you can see a man trying to keep it together against the odds and not knowing how.

This movie follows the life of Chris Gardner through one struggle after another. This movie manages to work on the heart strings, as the viewers think he hits rock bottom just to see them fall again . . . and then even further again. There is a constant struggle for balance or hope here, and when it seems that even the man in charge of the interns seems to be trying to sabotage Chris, it's hard not to feel sympathy for the poor guy.

If there is a drawback to this emotional drama, it's that there are times where the movie tends to move slowly. Keeping dramatic tension is difficult, and sometimes they use fifteen minutes where five would do, and though a strong touching and uplifting story, one still gets the sense that the conclusion would have been even stronger had the movie simply been fifteen minutes shorter. While a great risk for Will Smith to take, he can still continue to improve, and while this is a movie worth seeing (and based on a great true story), in the end it is a good, but not great, film.