Forced to work two shifts at a dead-end job, Linda angrily smolders and then rages at Chris, which seems reasonable since he has gambled all of their savings on an exceptionally foolish enterprise. But the machines are overpriced, and the sure thing he banked on has landed them in debt. That may sound like a punch line, at least to some ears, but it’s the holy grail in “The Pursuit of Happyness.” A self-starter, Chris has sunk all of the family’s money into costly medical scanners that he tries to sell to doctors and hospitals. Will Smith, right, plays the father of a boy portrayed by the actors real-life son Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, in The Pursuit of Happyness. Credit. This is no small thing, considering the film industry’s usual skewed sense of economic class, a perspective encapsulated by the insider who described the middle-class family in “Little Miss Sunshine” to me as working class, perhaps because the mother drives a gently distressed Miata rather than next year’s Mercedes. As does the day care center, which is so crummy it can’t even get happiness right (hence the title). That warmth feels truthful, as does the walk-up apartment Chris’s family lives in at the start of the film, which looks like the real paycheck-to-paycheck deal. To that calculated end, the filmmaking is seamless, unadorned, transparent, the better to serve Mr. It’s the same old bootstraps story, an American dream artfully told, skillfully sold.
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His optimism sweeps through the film like a searchlight, scattering clouds and dark thoughts to the wind.
![youtube pursuit of happiness youtube pursuit of happiness](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YaKuj-ajAx0/maxresdefault.jpg)
Evicted from the mainstream and bounced from shelter to shelter, Chris holds firm to his dignity, resolve, faith, love and independence. Smith’s own beautiful son), joins the ranks of the homeless, if not the hopeless. Written by Steven Conrad and directed by Gabriele Muccino, “The Pursuit of Happyness” recounts how Chris, plagued by some bad luck, a few stupid moves and a shrew for a wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), loses his apartment and, with his 5-year-old, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, Mr. Given how often Chris breaks into a run on the streets of San Francisco, it’s a good thing his shoes are well built his lungs, too.
![youtube pursuit of happiness youtube pursuit of happiness](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/htqgLPxLFok/maxresdefault.jpg)
(It also helps that the star playing him is as innately sympathetic as Will Smith.) It’s the early 1980s, and while Ronald Reagan is delivering the bad economic news on television, Chris is about to prove you don’t need an army to fight the war on poverty, just big smiles and smarts, and really sturdy shoes. Inspired by a true story, as they like to say in Hollywood, the film traces the fleeting ups and frightening downs of Chris Gardner, whose efforts to keep his family from sinking into poverty evolve into a life-and-death struggle of social Darwinian proportions. A fairy tale in realist drag, “The Pursuit of Happyness” is the kind of entertainment that goes down smoothly until it gets stuck in your craw.