There is a disconnect between film critics, artsy film students, and film buffs, and the other 90% of the filmgoing population. “Real” film lovers want originality in their movies. They want characters they haven’t seen before, endings that don’t feel manipulative, and a new way of presenting things. They want, as E! Online’s Answer B!tch so eloquently italicized it, art. The other 90% of moviegoers are tired after a long day at work or school. They want to be diverted, amused, shocked, terrified, stimulated, entertained. This is why Grindhouse is the best movie in theatres right now and Disturbia is currently number one at the box office.

Personally I think many film buffs and critics need to get their heads out of their asses, as there’s more to life worth getting excited over than the next Wong Kar Wai, David Lynch, or Paul Thomas Anderson (what’s he been up to since making Punch Drunk Love anyway?) film. But as The Pursuit of Happyness reminds me, I still get scared when a movie by the Wayans brothers or Tyler Perry makes more money than a film directed by Spike Lee. Had I gone to film school I probably would have been one of the students who wore a black toque or beret, scarf, and sunglasses in 30-degree weather (and boy would I have hated the people who wanted to be the next Michael Bay). The Pursuit of Happyness was popular (it made $162 million in North American theatres), I didn’t particularly like it, and in both cases it’s easy to see why.

It’s about a single father, fighting against the odds. It’s based on an inspiring real-life story (Chris Gardner, an unsuccessful medical equipment salesman, while just barely keeping off the street and taking care of his young son, managed to secure an internship at a prestigious San Francisco brokerage firm and after months of training beat out 19 other candidates to secure a spot in the company). It stars Will Smith (who’s admittedly great in the role) and his cute son Jaden Christopher. It’s as moving and insightful and well-acted and well-directed and hackneyed as any such movie I’ve ever seen. But 90% of filmgoers won’t care about this. They’ll see Will Smith, and his son, and be inspired by Gardner’s admittedly incredible story (after all, this is a guy who went from spending some of his nights in a public washroom to being a multimillionaire). They’ll appreciate that every element in the movie fits together, from the established power broker Gardner convinces to give him a chance by solving that most puzzling of brain teasers, the Rubik’s cube, to the way his loving but ultimately exasperated wife (played by Thandie Newton) treats him. They’ll see the trailer, and Smith’s name above the credits, and learn of Gardner’s story, and look forward to it, and for those people, it will be enough.

But for snootier filmgoers, we’ll be left asking questions. Like why did Gardner’s wife drop out of the picture so quickly, and why don’t we ever find out what happened to her? (Answer: in real life she never existed, and the two women of which she’s an amalgamation weren’t nearly as loving.) Where is the kid’s side of the story? Obviously after losing his mother, being locked out of his home (a motel room), sleeping in a bathroom, and being washed in a homeless shelter, wouldn’t he be left with some serious emotional issues by the time he turned thirty? (Answer: no, he was actually two years old and too young to remember anything except that his dad was always there for him.) How is it possible that an inefficient medical machine salesman can run into the people who stole his devices not once but twice, losing the second device when he gets his hand caught outside the subway door (which for some reason doesn’t open) – and then suddenly sell them all to pay his debts? (Answer: he didn’t; he had quit the machine-selling job by the time he started his pivotal internship, which lasted ten months and – unlike the movie – paid him a $1000-a-month honourarium.) Why is the movie paced so slowly and end so suddenly? (Answer: we may never really know.) We’ll wonder, and discover answers, and it will annoy us, because, we’ll say, why did the filmmakers have to trivialize so many of the story’s important details, and leave out others (like the fact that Gardner spent 10 days in jail and occasionally slept underneath his desk), turning an inspiring life story into forgettable fluff like this?

The answer: so it could be popular. Occasionally, art and popularity will intersect, as in Star Wars, Jaws, and Raiders of the Lost Ark in the late 70s and early 80s, and Traffic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the Lord of the Rings movies more recently. These films are the hardest to pull off and the ones I admire most. The Pursuit of Happyness is not one of them. 90% of moviegoers will enjoy it; the rest are better off buying a ticket to see something like The Hoax instead.

Features include an enjoyable commentary track by Gabriele Muccino, the film’s ambitious Italian director, whom Smith personally asked to direct this project (interesting sidenote: one of the scenes that works best is Gardner meeting a stockbroker, seeing how happy they look, and discovering you don’t need anything more than a head for numbers and a high school diploma; Mucchino wasn’t satisfied with the original version, so he rewrote the scene himself), and 10 – 20-minute PR documentaries on Muccino, Smith and his son Jaden, the real Chris Gardner (which tells you nothing my friends and I wanted to know) and the Rubik’s cube.






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