Will Smith Marathon - The Pursuit of Happyness

Now before you get all "spell check" on my arse I'd just like to acknowledge that I KNOW that happiness is not spelt with a "Y". It's deliberately misspelled in the movie title for reasons that will become clear quite quickly. Now that that's settled, welcome to the Will Smith Movie Marathon!

That's right folks, after the roaring success I had with the Jeff Goldblum reviews I just had to sink my teeth into Will Smith's hot, well toned movie career. As with my dear friend Jeff, I miss out on reviewing many films here so I've picked three that I either haven't seen or have only seen once before. Anyway so I thought I'd start with The Pursuit of Happiness because it's the one I hadn't seen before and I need to critique it before I forget about it all.

So let me set the scene. It's 1980 something and Will Smith is poor. His wife is pretty much sick of him making bad financial descisions and leaves him. Having an extremely estranged relationship with his own father Will has vowed never to leave his own kids and so it is decided that Will's son is to stay with him. The movie basically details the struggles of Will's character to provide a reasonable life for his son as he tries to stay affloat whilst he undergoes an internship at a stockbroker, competing against 19 other interns for a single position.

As far as Will Smith roles go this one is somewhat atypical. This isn't Will in his usual slick role as a wise-talkin' action hero. This is Will Smith as a very sympathetic character who is struggling to turn his life around having made some very bad descisions earlier in his life. You know something else? It works. This movie is extremely well executed considering all the pitfalls it could have fallen into. It's caring and warm without getting sentimental. Will Smith's son (played by his actual, real life son) is fragile and unaware without being overly naieve or disgustingly cutesy. With this kind of movie the potential for things to turn crap are everywhere and there's really only a very fine line where all the films elements overlap to make something this good. It could have been too gritty. It could have been too preachy. But it was none of those things. It was simply fantastic. I know that outright loving something makes my reviews extremely unentertaining but you know something? This movie is great and I don't really care what you say about me or it.