Will Smith's Pursuit of Happ'y'ness will make Your Cockles Feel Plenty Warm!

Rating: 10/10 (4 May 2015)

Directed by Gabriele Muccino, the intentionally misspelt The Pursuit of Happiness opens in 1981 as we meet Chris Gardner (Will Smith) barely holding on to normal life as a husband, father and seller of bone-density scanners that few doctors need and fewer can afford. We see from the get-go his devotion to his son Christopher (Jaden Smith) and his shoe-leather perseverance with the scanners; we also see his nit-picking, wife Linda (Thandie Newton), who hangs around just long enough to abandon him for a better life back East. Chris copes as best he can: trying to make the rent, failing to make the rent, moving into a motel, trying and failing to make the rent there.
A glimpse of hotshot stockbrokers driving hotshot wheels sparks dreams of capitalist glory that Chris pursues despite every conceivable setback. He schmoozes the suits at Dean Witter with his forthrightness and flair for Rubik's Cube. Chris finally wangles himself a six- month internship as a stockbroker, with a long-shot chance for a job at the end. The catch is that there's no pay. Now he's a solo parent, and his son misses mom and the apartment Chris couldn't pay for, and none of the chirpy suits at Dean Witter realize that brisk, affable Chris is scraping by on nerve and small change. We see him rear his son with a nurturing, steadfast love that sustains them both when they've hit bottom on a bed of toilet paper, even enlisting his son's ingenuous imagination to patch their spirits together. Chris is acting on all fronts - cheerfully boosting his son's morale, while pretending nonchalance with his colleagues.
In its outlines, it's nothing like the usual success story, in which, after a reasonable interval of disappointment, success arrives wrapped in a ribbon and a bow. Instead, this success story chronicles a series of soul-sickening failures and defeats and missed opportunities, all of which are accompanied by a concomitant accretion of barely perceptible victories that gradually amount to something. The film is tied together by director Gabriele Muccino's adept direction, which keeps proceedings substantial but never melodramatic as he juggles the disparate story elements with more than enough dexterity. Will Smith gives a selfless performance as Chris Gardner, as he conveys the gradual erosion of a man's self- worth. An actor with almost quantifiable likability, he relinquishes his 'actor-ly' vanity and creates a real, complicated and not always sympathetic figure. He plays Gardener with such wry, resigned matter-of-factness that you can't help but root for him. Unsurprisingly, he has a natural on-screen rapport with Jaden, who is himself absolutely endearing in his role, and their powerful father- son bond is genuinely moving.
The Pursuit of Happiness is a go-for-the-gold heart-warmer affirming that anyone can pull himself up by the bootstraps and make something of himself. It's an earnest, modest, heartfelt little ode to paternal love that will warm the cockles of our hearts, and even a recalcitrant Scrooge may sniff back a few salty droplets.