The Pursuit of Pointlessness

Rating: 5/10 (15 July 2010)

Why write a review when there are 551 already written on the same film ? Well, what pushes 550 people to write yet another review on a film that has been publicized everywhere and that everyone knows about ? That would be rather pointless, wouldn't it? And so TPoH is a seriously pointless film; Chris Gardner (Will "Welcome to Planet Earth" Smith) is your average college hippy, who has a brilliant idea, gets married, and rather rapidly becomes flat broke on the grounds of his brilliant idea being "bollocks", as Blackadders would say; Reduced to misery, and left by his wife to raise his child, Gardner gives his best shot at success by joining a trainee stockbroker program, all the while trying to scrounge a living; The focus of the film is a good 90% on how Gardner tries to appear a clean cut, serious businessman to his clients and bosses while actually being a miserable wretch. Then, through mostly chance, and maybe a very small amount of human talent - of which we all have some - actually lands the job.
Then why ?
Why make a film about it? This man is not, in any way better than any of us, or even better than any other stockbroker (joke); My guess is that mr Welcome to Earth wanted a platform to win an Oscar with. A sample of the film's dialogue:
Random Actor 1 : *long, well written character-building monologue*
Chris Gardner : "Yes sir, Thank you sir"
Random Actor 2 : same as above
Chris Gardner : same as above.
This mess of a film is two hours of glorification of the supporting actor, and a major fail for Smith, an actor whose career includes such unforgettable films such as Hanckok, I Robot, I Am Legend, and another large bunch of really bad Hollywood stinkers. If only he stuck to comedy, Smith *might* have a claim to being a serious actor, but trying to be a serious actor, he shot himself in the foot...
Awesome film to bring your girlfriend to, extremely boring and uninspiring for anyone else, except maybe children, who watching this might want to become a - white, preppy, high class - stockbroker.
5/10, for having a script as entertaining as waiting in line at the toll booth.