The Pursuit of Happyness

I found this film exhausting to watch as it made its turn for the home stretch. How bad could it get for Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith)? Well, it gets pretty depressing for a guy betting it all on being a 1-in-20 shot to get a job as a stockbroker at Dean Witter in the early 1980's as he finagles his way into a 6-month internship with no salary and has major money woes, and basically struggles daily, while taking care of his son because the wife bails on him.

Will Smith does a good job in the acting department, and his real-life son Jaden is cute enough to get the job done as little Christopher Gardner, but the script is simply too long, and features far too many running sequences for Will Smith to go chasing hippies and homeless people. Of course, when you see the "inspired by a real story" tag, you are left with a pretty predictable storyline, and the acting can't quite propel the film to greatness on most levels, and ends up being a decent way to spend a couple of hours, but it wouldn't be on my recommend list unless the potential viewer is a Will Smith fan.

I didn't enjoy the heavy film grain look whenever the cameras are brought inside Gardner's apartment, it was jarring to me the multiple times it happened within the story, and I didn't think it enhanced the bleakness the director was going for with such a conscious decision to shoot in "low-light" condition to impart that graininess look to the footage.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.