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What's this?The actor is one of my favorites and the PG-13 film is a true "family flick" about a father fighting to raise himself and his young son out of poverty.
But I found the movie to be more irritating than inspiring with the Smith character causing too many of the personal and financial obstacles he has to overcome by the uplifting finale.
"Happyness"is based on the true story of a hugely successful San Francisco stockbroker named Chris Gardner who started his career by talking his way into a highy competitive internship at Dean Witter.
Gardner was a salesman before that.
The businessman's story inspired a "20/20" segment on ABC that in turn led to a production deal with Smith who says, "I saw this story as the embodiment of the American dream."
Unfortunately, the way the story is told in the movie doesn't ring true and the depiction of Gardner's wife Linda (played by Thandie Newton) is appallingly slanted.
As the film opens, Linda and Chris are struggling together to raise young Christopher (played by Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, the son of the film's star).
Linda is working two shifts a day as a hotel chamber maid while her husband is involved in a crazy scheme to sell bone density scanners that he has used all of their savings to purchase.
Linda's concern is well placed — and it's clear she is working herself to death
Dad winds up in jail due to overdue parking tickets, loans money to deadbeat friends and signs up for a three-month unpaid internship at a stock brokerage firm when the family doesn't have enough money to pay the rent (and owes back taxes to the IRS).
The wife eventually takes off for New York for a better job, but inexplicably leaves her son in the care of a father who — up to that point in their relationship — didn't seem capable of being a breadwinner.
It would be fascinating to hear Linda Gardner's side of this weirdly skewed family drama.
