Just one off of Perfection!

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2007)

If your think you have it bad, then you need to see this film. Having seen the story of the real Chris Gardener as played out during his visit to the Oprah Winfrey show last year, I finally got to see The Pursuit of Happiness last night. It was good and I mean very good. Honestly, the promos did it no justice. I haven't gotten around to seeing Will Smith (who plays Chris Gardener here) in Ali so forgive me if I call his performance in this film the crowning performance of his career. This will be hard to top in future roles.
In Pursuit, we meet Chris Gardener (as played by Will Smith) a man who is coming to terms with a bad business decision he made, while battling a nagging wife (played by a very twitchy Thandie Newton) and trying to make sure that his son (played by Smith's real life offspring Jaden Christopher Syre Smith) doesn't have the sort of childhood that he had. Slowly but surely, things begin to fall even more apart when his wife abandons him, his landlord evicts him and the IRS chomp down on his savings account for owed back taxes. Nevertheless, Gardener still manages turn his life around by switching professions, keeping his determination, finish up as a door-to-door salesman, all with his young son in tow as at this point he had become a single father.
tons of kudos to Smith Jr., for as a child he acted very well and broke some major hearts in the theatre. Not much can be said for Thandie Newton though, who plays the boys mother in the film. She was horribly miscast as the American woman she plays. I mean what was up with that nervous Druggie twitch? And that default weird southern accent she always seems to fall back on whenever she plays an American. Come on now Thandie, get creative! The soundtrack was great as were the co-stars. A splendid film indeed.