The Pursuit of Happyness
A hard-pressed African-American single parent and his five-year old son struggle to survive and fulfill the American dream in San Francisco in 1981. It benefits hugely from the chemistry between a real-life father and son.
Will Smith is trying to make a living by selling bone scanner machines in San Francisco to doctors and medical centers. Although he is a natural born salesman, this African-American believes that he is destined for a better career path. His wife Linda is working at two jobs to help pay the bills, and they are behind on their rent. Their five-year old son, Christopher, goes to a day carecenter, and it bugs his dad that on the outside of the building, the term “the pursuit of happyness” is misspelled. He is convinced that these little details make all the difference in life.
Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is the type of guy everyone knows and most have been at one point in their life or another – the working poor. He’s smart and hard-working but unable to catch a break and falling further and further behind in his responsibilities to everything except his young son whom he’d promised to always be around for, no matter the circumstances.
Chris’s persistence pays off when he is chosen for an internship program at a prestigious stock brokerage firm. The determining factor seems to be that he impresses one of the top officers by solving a Rubiks Cube in record time. The only hitches to his new lease on life are that the program does not pay any salary and only one of the 20 interns will eventually be hired.
Meanwhile, his financial condition grows more shaky when a few of his bone scanning machines are stolen, and he and his son are evicted from their apartment. They move into a small room at a motel but then are forced on to the streets. Father and son wind up sleeping in a bathroom in a bus station. Luckily, they are able to make this harrowing experience into a game by pretending they are hiding out in a cave from dinosaurs.
As his desperation starts building up, Gardner sticks constantly to the expectation that his hard work will in the end pay off. In addition, his quest for a better life portrays an incredible bond between the father and son that no incident can demolish.
Despite the fact that the entry-level position is unpaid, one of the 20 interns will be selected for a full time job at the firm. Being the goal-oriented person he is, he gets selected amongst the 20 interns. At the end of his internship, Gardner is called for a meeting with his superiors and he then discovers that he has earned a full time job at the firm.
This movie is a beautiful journey of a father & son who sticks through each other throughout their life, struggling to earn the bread and how finally the hard work pays off. Very inspirational & heart touching.
Disclaimer: The above review solely illustrates the views of the writer.