The Pursuit of Happiness(當幸福來敲門)經(jīng)典電影英文影評

2023年12月4日發(fā)(作者：醫(yī)務處)

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The Pursuit of Happiness（當幸福來敲門）2006

With a title like The Pursuit of Happiness, you expect the characters to get to the promid land. They do,

but if the journey matters more than the destination, this is a movie to skip. The Pursuit of Happyness is

long, dull, and depressing. It expands into two hours a story that could have been told more effectively in

one. This is not the feel-good movie of the ason unless you believe that a few moments of good cheer

can redeem 110 minutes of gloom. Sitting through The Pursuit of Happiness is a chore. Downbeat movies

aren't inherently bad (in fact, many are powerful), but this one provides artificial characters in contrived

circumstances. How is it that movies "inspired by a real story" often feel more fake than tho fully

embedded in the realm of fiction?

Will Smith has generated Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Chris Gardner, the real-life guy who

rags-to-riches story forms the basis of the movie. (Impoverished guy becomes capitalist poster boy.) While

it's fair to say that this is one of the best straight performances of Smith's career, it didn't blow me away. In

and of itlf, the acting, while effective, is not Best Actor material, but it wouldn't surpri me if the

movie's prestige factor and Smith's popularity earn him a nod. Meanwhile, his female co-star, Thandie

Newton, isn't going to be considered for any award. Newton spends about 90% of her screen time doing an

impersonation of a harpy: screeching, bitching, and contorting her face into unpleasant expressions.

Smith's son, Jaden, is okay as the movie's child protagonist; it's unclear whether his occasional deficiencies

are the result of his acting, Steven Conrad's writing, or Gabriele Muccino's direction, but there's not much

personality behind the cute features and curly hair.

Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is down on his luck. It's 1981 San Francisco and his lf-employed business of

lling portable bone density scanners isn't doing well. His wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), does nothing

but yell at him and give him a cold shoulder, and the lack of domestic harmony is impacting the disposition

of his beloved son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith). That's when Chris' life turns into a country

song. His wife leaves. He is evicted from his home. He goes to jail, neither passing GO nor collecting a

much-needed $200. He gets hit by a car. He is robbed. He makes his son cry. He alienates a friend over $14.

He gets to spend a night in the cleanest public restroom in the history of public restrooms. But there's a

bright spot, although you need a dark-adapted eye to find it. Despite having no experience, Chris applies to

enter an internship program at Dean Witter. He would appear to have no chance to get in until he amazes

the head of the program (Brian Howe) by solving the Rubik's Cube puzzle in the back of a taxi cab.

It's a blessing that the movie doesn't u a stock villain to impede Chris' herky-jerky trip to the top, becau

that would have tipped the movie into the empire of the unwatchable. However, the lack of a strong

conflict makes the two-hour running length em very long. Thankfully, there's also not much in the way

of overt melodrama, but that could be a byproduct of having characters who are not deeply realized and

have narrow emotional ranges. It's tough to connect with Chris and his son. Although they are played by a

real-life father and son, there's no chemistry between them. We're constantly told how desperately Chris

loves Christopher, but it takes a long time before we begin to buy it. Most of the time, Christopher ems

like an annoying piece of baggage that Chris drops off at daycare when he has other things to do.

The film's most compelling scenes are tho that show Chris struggling to enter the rat race. Granted, this

is no Glengarry Glen Ross, but it shows the pressure the salesmen are under and how important the

contact lists are. In the overall scheme of things, however, the quences are background noi. They are

neither plentiful nor lengthy. The movie spends more time following Chris on his futile sales rounds for the

bone density scanner than it does accompanying him during his broker training.

The moral of the story is as trite as they come: don't let anyone convince you to give up on your dreams.

Disney animated films have been doing this better for decades. The Pursuit of Happyness concludes with a

caption that tells us what happens to Chris after the end of the movie; it promis a better story than the

one we have just watched. The film is also marred by a persistent (although not verbo) voiceover that

adds nothing to the story while frequently jerking us out of the experience of watching it. I don't need Will

Smith telling me: "This part of the story is called 'riding the bus.'"

This is the English-language debut of Gabriele Muccino, who has made a name for himlf in Italian

cinema. The Pursuit of Happiness has the kind of slow, drab tone one occasionally associates with a

director raid outside of the Hollywood system. What can be an ast in some circumstances is a

detriment in this one. The Pursuit of Happiness isn't enjoyable, and its meager pleasures, including the

eventual "payoff," aren't enough to justify the unrelenting miry. The Pursuit of Happiness is competently

made and gets lots of the details right, but when it comes to the emotional core of the story, it los the

pursuit and miss the "happiness."

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No.2 The Pursuit of Happiness（當幸福來敲門）2006

Will Smith plays a San Francisco medical equipment salesman who resolves to change his life and become

a stockbroker, but is made homeless in the process

The sort of film the Oscars are designed for, The Pursuit Of Happiness should induce naua. There's the

cheesy dialogue ("You want something, go get it - period!"). There's the annoying title, with its deliberate

misspelling (a reference to a slogan en on a wall that becomes the film's mantra). And there's the father

and son acting combo of Will Smith and ven-year-old Jaden, who between them rve unapologetically

as an advert for the American dream. Yet thanks to Italian director Gabriele Muccino, in his first

Hollywood outing, the film holds firm.

Set in San Francisco in 1981, at a time when the Rubik's Cube is sweeping the nation, the film is inspired

by the real-life story of one Chris Gardner (Smith). A struggling Bay Area salesman, Gardner's product is a

"portable bone density scanner", a box of tricks which he believes doctors will soon be clamouring for. But

luck derts Gardner alongside his wife Linda (Newton) and a hippie girl steals one of his scanners.

Left with custody of his five-year-old son Christopher (Smith), Gardner is desperate to be a good father, as

he didn't know his own Dad until he was 28. A chance encounter with a stockbroker inspires Gardner to

change career and cure an internship at a brokerage. Remarkably, he manages to get onto the six-month

cour, but it's a gamble. "There was no salary," he says. "Not even a reasonable promi of a job." Forced

to ll his remaining machines on the weekends, he and Christopher live on the poverty line, and are

evicted after Gardner is hit with a crippling tax bill. Looked at cynically, the film boasts one of tho

heavyweight performances that Hollywood A-list stars occasionally offer in a quest for cachet. In this ca

Smith lets his hair go grey to convince us that this is no vanity project. But bonding convincingly (as you

might expect) with his own son on screen, Smith delivers his most compelling performance since Ali in

2001. Playing Gardner as a decent, honest man who refus to let life grind him down, it's an inspirational

turn.

With Muccino (best known for 2001's L'Ultimo Bacio, which was remade in the US in 2005 as The Last

Kiss) in charge, Smith's acting is shorn of the usual high-energy tics that have blighted his work. So

enchanting is the performance that it overshadows the film's more problematic and manipulative moments,

notably the contention that capitalism holds the key to happiness. But this is Will Smith doing Kramer Vs.

Kramer and the film never allows us to contemplate its dubious nature for too long.

Verdict

Between Muccino's nsitive direction and Smith and son's expertly calibrated performances, The Pursuit

Of Happiness manages to win you over with a flurry of feel good emotions.

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