My Review of The Pursuit of Happyness

I first heard about the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I am an Oprah fan and a Will Smith fan. The last few movies recommended by Oprah have been great. I learned about the movie, Walk the Line and Crash on her show and I loved both of them. I had no doubt I would love this movie as well. I loved Will Smith in Hitch with Kevin James, all the Men in Black movies and Independence Day. Oprah had both Will and his son Jaden on her show and of course showed clips of the movie. In addition she had the real Chris Gardner on the show, ( the guy the movie is based on).

In this movie, Will shows us a very serious and emotional side of himself. Will's real life son plays his son Christopher in the movie and he's a natural. I guess it's not surprising that talent runs in the family. The movie is based on the true life story of Chris Gardner and is set in San Francisco in the early 80's. Will plays Chris Gardner and the mother of his child, Linda is played by Thandie Newton. The story starts out with the young couple struggling to get by financially. They have invested most of their money into portable bone density machines for Chris to sell to doctors. Chris finds out the majority of the doctors consider this device a luxury item rather then a necessity. Selling the device is much harder then Chris thought they would be. In the meantime, they are getting way behind on all their bills, even with Linda pulling double shifts on her job. Linda is getting really fed up with the situation and decides she's going to leave and take her son with her. Chris demands that his son stay with him. He promised himself long ago if he ever had kids he would not abandon them like his own father did. Linda does end up leaving and Chris continues working and caring for his son. One day while he is walking to a sales appointment he spots a well-dressed man getting out of an expensive sports car. Chris asks the man, what does he do to be able to afford a car like that. The man tells Chris he's a stockbroker. Chris says that you probably need a college degree for that, right. The man tells him, no, not really, you just have to be good with people and numbers, and apply for an interview. Chris gets a call to go in for an interview. Chris's interview goes well and he is accepted into the internship training program. There is no salary paid during the internship and Chris will compete against 20 other candidates for one position with the company. Chris almost backs out of the internship at this point, but decides to go for it and continue to sell his machines at the same time. Bad luck seems to follow him everywhere and it keeps you wondering how he will handle it. His money continues to runs out to the point where he and his son become homeless, but Chris continues to persevere. The movie is very inspiring and includes both funny, very sad and serious situations. I was not disappointed.

The real Chris Gardner now has his own multimillion brokerage firm, Gardner Rich and Co. He is a an avid philanthropist and motivational speaker involved in education and economic development. He has his own website where you can find his biography, the book that the movie was based on and more.

Interesting and little known facts about the movie include a cameo appearance by the real Chris Gardner as the man who walks past Will Smith at the end of the movie. Quotes containing voice overs by the real Chris Gardner include, This part of my life...this part right here? This part is called "being stupid", this part is called "running" and this part is called "internship". Speed Cubing Champions Toby Mayo, Tyson Mao, (a contestant on the tv show Beauty and the Geek, who also served as a consultant for the prop department) and Lars Petrus were hired to teach Will to do the Rubik's Cube. Actual homeless people were hired and paid as extras in the movie.