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BY MAGGIE SCOTT

Producer Jason Blumenthal wanted the ads for The Pursuit of Happyness” to read, “Some superheroes are real.” You can’t get more real or heroic than Christopher Gardner, a man who went from sleeping on a subway station’s bathroom floor to accepting a stock broker position with the San Francisco offices of Dean Witter Reynolds in 1981.

The epitome of grace under pressure, Gardner was a man on the skids that year. His marriage in turmoil, his income from medical equipment sales faltering, Chris (Will Smith) is behind on bills, taxes and coming up with an affordable birthday present for his five-year-old.

Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith) would like a basketball. Chris’s wife Linda (Thandie Newton) would like her husband to be the solution to her unhappiness. Chris would like someone to believe in him. Although his marriage is important to him, there’s nothing that means more to Chris than his son.

When Linda bails, when he and Christopher are evicted, when his bone density scanners are stolen, when his bank account is down to twenty-one dollars, Chris keeps his eyes on the prize: proving that he can make the grade as an intern with Dean Witter Reynolds.

Lugging his suits, suitcase, briefcase and one of three scanners he has left to sell, (the other two are in the hands of thieves) the homeless Chris keeps his fighting spirits up. He puts out the work needed to be the top salesman after six months: making hundreds of cold calls, racing to meetings, studying for the stockbroker exam, fetching donuts and coffee, loaning his last five bucks to the company CEO for cab fare.

No matter what calamity, set back, danger, humiliation or challenge Chris faces, he squares his shoulders, takes his son by the hand and tells him everything will be alright, that they will make it somehow.

Chris knows it is up to him to change his life; but it will not happen at his son’s expense. And that right to happiness the Declaration of Independence makes such a big deal of? Maybe all Thomas Jefferson was promising was the right to pursue, with no guarantee about the happiness.

Chris knows in his heart that when he’s done his best to prove to others what he already knew—that Christopher Gardner is “good with numbers and good with people”—happiness will take care of itself. Try holding back the tears after pulling for Chris for more than two hours.

Try ignoring the feeling that director Gabriele Muccino is leaving out an important element of Chris’s struggle: prejudice. On screen, there’s not one white face that bats an eye in the presence of the African American Chris. A fairy tale element to this fairy-tale-come true story that does a disservice to what Gardner accomplished. A Columbia Pictures release, rated PG for language
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