The Pursuit of Happyness

The Pursuit of Happyness

01.02.07 (12:12 pm)   [edit]
EDIT: Okay, I finally finished this.

My first thought when I saw the trailer for this movie was that they spelled the word "happiness" wrong so it would be easier to trademark the title. And that kind of crass thinking is pretty much how I viewed the entire movie when I later saw it with a group from work. The Pursuit of Happyness is a schmaltzy little chunk of Hollywood nepotism, just in time for the holidays! I'm trying not to be too sarcastic, but let's just look at this movie for what it is: Will Smith and his actual son, trying to gain sympathy by looking cute and pretending to be poor.

Don't you feel bad for the poor multimillionaire? He has to sleep in a bathroom at BART!

The film is intended to be cheesy feel good "aww, let's prove that we still have faith in humanity!" holiday fare, along the lines of It's A Wonderful Life, but with perhaps a little less overt of a Christmas theme. After all, Christmas is no longer politically correct.

The Pursuit of Happyness is not a complete train wreck. Most of the acting is competent, and I don't have any real complaints with the cinematography. It's nothing that will stand out in any way, but it gets the job done professionally.

Another plus the movie has going for it is that it is set in San Francisco, my favorite city, and obviously I recognized many of the sights. It's also set in the 80's, and since I was a child in the 80's, there's also that element of nostalgia.

But like many movies Hollywood is churning out these days, The Pursuit of Happyness has severe pacing problems. This is not a matter of going on way too long (like your Lords of the Rings or your King Kongs), this is matter of really flawed screenplay structure more than anything. Some movies can get away with not following typical dramatic three act structure, but it takes someone both skilled and artistic to pull it off. This movie is just not that experimental or daring, and so it looks like a miscarriage of a film.

Here's why: In a normal down-on-your-luck story, we meet the characters and learn that the protagonist has a horrible life, then the protagonist struggles to improve his life, and then things improve after a big conflict, and finally we get to ride along with the protagonist for a bit while he enjoys the fruits of his labors, and isn't life great after all and we all leave the theatre feeling happy.

Not in this movie.

In this movie it's 98% "life is shit, and boy aren't white people oblivious to that fact that not everyone is rich like them", followed by a 2 minute epilogue with a smarmy voice over telling us that things are great now. This pay off is unacceptable.

That also brings up another problem I have with this movie. The voice over is totally insulting and superfluous. I think it's supposed to make us like Will Smith's character and find him easier to relate to, but it's just really lazy, lazy storytelling. Sometimes this kind of narration works, largely as a matter of mood in film noir or introspective art films. The Pursuit of Happyness does not have a good reason for this narration at all. It's just intrusive and makes the movie seem slower than it is. Also, Will Smith's toothless, unfunny jokes in the voice over really get on my nerves. But maybe I am just not the target of this movie, seeing as I have no children, and have never been homeless.

Another big problem is that aside from Will Smith's character, everyone else is the movie is just a boring stock character. The dopey old rich white guys who don't realize how poor and in trouble Will Smith is could be at least moderately interesting background characters, instead of the boring shells they are. Just look at the Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd comedy from 1983, Trading Places. Sure, they were amoral old rich white guys, but they were aware that their capricious whims were mangling regular people's lives. They just thought it was funny. This shows character. It shows how little other people matter to them. The ones in The Pursuit of Happyness are just oblivious. In fact, while I'm at, just watch Trading Places instead of Pursuit of Happyness period. It's a much funnier movie, a much more intelligent movie, and has better pacing and explores similar themes with far more class, style, and thought.

Now for some minor irritants: Okay, you left a super expensive bone density scanning machine with a homeless chick with a guitar because you are a naive moron. So we have a chase scene where you get your stupid scanner back. I'll let you get away with that once. But you do the SAME STUPID THING AGAIN AND FORCE US TO WATCH ANOTHER PATHETIC CHASE SCENE LATER IN THE MOVIE? NO. BAD MOVIE.

Furthermore, how is it that Will Smith is just as homeless as the bums, yet his clothes are always clean and immaculately pressed (despite the amount of running and sweating he does on camera), how is he always clean shaven and showered, and how does he keep that afro in check? He can't loan his boss five bucks for a cab, but he can get his hair done? I realize this is a standard problem with Hollywood movies (see the zillion film women who wake up in the morning with perfect hair and make-up), but it sticks out badly in contrast to the many downtrodden homeless people the film shoves in our faces. Oh, I feel so bad for you, fit, attractive, and charming man.

Come to think of it, he is charming and attractive (despite the mustache), so if he had no place for him and his little son to stay, are you trying to tell me he couldn't say some sweet nothings to any of a number of girls and talk his way into their bedrooms? Please.

On the bright side, at least Will Smith has toned down his, "I make this look good" too cool for school (but not primetime sitcoms) persona and made an attempt at serious acting, but guys, really, I am just not buying this.

As I'm writing this, The Pursuit of Happyness is still number 5 at the box office. I was about to make a comment about how there is no accounting for taste, but the number 4 movie is a dire remake of a film where Rutger Hauer was a hitchhiker who murdered people.