My English educated reading picked up the incorrect spelling of Happyness on the title of DVD, but I attributed it to a bad copy job from the Chinese printers. It turns out that the title is indeed spelled correctly, but the mispelling comes from within the movie on a mural which is ironically in San Francisco Chinatown.

The Pursuit of Happyness takes place in the early 80s and follows a financially struggling family, with bills piling up and creditors calling. The father, Will Smith, is a salesman selling overpriced and bulky bone density scanners for a living; unfortunately few doctors want to buy them. One day, he spots a stock broker driving a fancy car with a smile (!) on his face, and decides that he wants to be happy like him. The movie goes on to describe his journey to reach his goal.

This is, as you can expect, a character driven movie. However I found that rather than Will Smith being a good actor and conveying his emotions, the emotions are generated by scripting scenarios that are meant to be tear jerkers. And at the core, the movie is about The American Dream™ but tailored to African-Americans (hence Will Smith as the lead). It’s not a bad movie, and is told well; but if you want the non-Hollywood version, you could read up on Chris Gardner on Wikipedia. I’ll give The Pursuit of Happyness three out of five stars.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: moviereview