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The Pursuit of Happyness
Chasing after thieves, ducking out on cab drivers. Will Smith does a lot of running in The Pursuit of Happyness, as if he's taking that title literally. It's a reference to the American Declaration of Independence of course, as Steve Conrad's screenplay spells out: you have the right to pursue happiness, not the right to happiness itself. And that bothersome 'y'? Much to the chagrin of Smith's character, Chris Gardner, the word is misspelled on a mural outside the only daycare he can afford for his five-year-old son Christopher (played by Jaden Smith, Will's real-life son). I guess it's emblematic of what's off in his life. The project began with a human interest segment on a current affairs show, a piece about how Gardner went from rags to riches, walking in off the street into a stock brokers' firm and talking his way into an internship. Only it wasn't as easy as that. For a start, he had debts, a wife and kid. Then the wife (Thandie Newton) left him in disgust, and he insisted on keeping the boy with him. He gets the internship, but it's unpaid, with only a one-in-20 chance of a real job at the end of six months. Because he has no money coming in, his landlord has no choice but evict him. Chris and Christopher have to line up every afternoon to get a bunk in a homeless shelter. 
Someone once said that what Americans really respond to is a tragedy with a happy ending. This movie fits the bill (that's not a spoiler by the way, it could only end one way). It goes without saying the material is potentially very sentimental. As a rule, Hollywood doesn't do poverty well. Indeed, the movie's politics are essentially conservative: Gardner pulls himself up by his bootstraps through hard work and self-sacrifice to realise the American Dream. (It's surprising, and maybe not credible, that the question of race never once comes into play during Gardner's apprenticeship.) But perhaps it's not as simple as that. Screenwriter Steve Conrad's last produced script was The Weather Man, one of the most intriguing and underrated films of the last couple of years, and a movie predicated on the knowledge that money and privilege isn't everything, that the Dream can feel awfully unreal when you're living it. The Pursuit of Happyness strikes me as a less sophisticated, more satisfying story, yet its upbeat resolution doesn't negate all the hardship and struggle we witness along the way. Directed by Gabriele Muccino, who directed the original, Italian version of The Last Kiss, this is one Hollywood movie that does manage to portray poverty in a realistic, believable, and distressing way. 
It shows that money makes a practical difference (that sounds basic, I know, but not so many American movies seem to know it). That people without money still love their kids, and do the best they can in a bad situation. That at often times, love is enough to see you through, but sometimes it's not, and when they pile up, the bad times can tear your heart out. Conrad is sometimes a rather self-consciously literary screenwriter, but there are two sequences here that sum up the real pleasures of confident Hollywood storytelling. In the first, Gardner talks his way into a cab with the man who holds his fate in his hands, and when his pitch falls on deaf ears, decides to impress the guy by proving his facility with a Rubik's cube (this is 1981). But can he pull it off in time? In the second, he shows up at his internship interview straight from jail, without a shirt, and covered in paint; if ever there was a lost cause, this would seem to be it. But this scene should be mandatory viewing for interviewees and interviewers alike, because it cuts to the chase of what it is we do, when we judge someone. Me, anyway, I came out happy with a 'y'. Tom Charity
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