Redundant as well as redundant

Rating: 2/10 (24 May 2007)

I started fast forwarding about 9 minutes into this dreadful flick. OK, how many times do I have to see Will Smith chasing his bone density scanner? It wasn't funny the first time. It's called life. And anyone who has spent a day in San Francisco probably has better anecdotes to tell than this looong and redundant extended anecdote about how one guy made good. Note that I do NOT say this film demonstrates how WE ALL CAN DO GOOD. No. Maybe that was in the book since they left it out of the movie. This movie is an anecdote, a boring one, a petty one, that involves a child. Money leads to happiness: is the moral. Uh, what? Not just any money...Stock trading! Stock trading in the Reagan era '80s. Gee, why not make him invent bell bottom jeans in 1972? A monkey dressed like an astronaut could have traded stocks in the '80s.
If these filmmakers are ever chosen to make a movie about my life then kill me first. I was more interested in the homeless people than in Gardner's "gotta survive" attitude. Jeez. It was like someone said, "How can we make a movie about Seabiscuit, except make it be a guy in the 1980's San Francisco?" I know it was "inspired by a true story" but what isn't? There was not a single sentence that Smith could narrate without sounding hopelessly artificial. Narrating, chasing a bus, shaking hands, talking on phones. Useless, useless, useless. I'm sure on paper the thing smelled like an Oscar, but on the screen it was a yawn fest except maybe for some weepy single moms or depressed stock brokers. The end postlogue might as well have read "Chris Gardner got really rich and bought all the nice stuff that he never had as a kid. He did this because he sold stocks while raising his own child after basically taking him from his mother." Can you hear the applause? I give it one point because Smith and his kid are competent with the material. The material, however, belongs in readers digest "Inspirational Anecdotes that are Nevertheless Forgettable" edition.