Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith

Too Much Information

If you’ve ever baked a beautiful loaf of broad but left out the wee bit of salt the recipe calls for you know what Pursuit of Happyness was like for me. There was something missing in a movie that perfect strangers recommended to me as inspirational and emotionally fulfilling.

The movie is about Chris Gardner a whip-smart, but down-on-his-luck Navy veteran in San Francisco in the early years of the Reagan presidency. Chris has made some boneheaded decisions, including marrying his quarrelsome wife Linda (Thandie Newton). But he wants something better for himself and his son Christopher (played by Smith’s real-life son Jaden).

What was the missing seasoning?

It’s not the acting. Will Smith was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award and Jaden’s performance has been widely lauded as well. Supporting actors include Dan Castellaneta, wearing one of William Shatner’s old hairpieces. Dan is better known as the voice of Homer Simpson.

It’s not the direction either. Italian director Gabriele Muccino does just fine. He manages to sympathetically depict the kooks that have tumbled to the left coast while keeping the story focused squarely on Gardner.

The script has real meat in it. Gardner’s plainly a driven man, but he’s not so single-minded or one-dimensional as Ahab going after his whale. Gardner desperately loves his son and wants to give him something more. Gardner’s story is personally affecting; a man trying to better himself under extraordinarily-challenging circumstances.

The problem, I think, is the way the movie was promoted. The climax is missing some punch in part because Gardner was out promoting the release of the softcover edition of his autobiography in October 2006. So I knew back in September 2006, months before the movie came out in December, what happened to Gardner. Gardner’s story was told in Fortune, Reader’s Digest, USA Today, Oprah, 20/20, The View, and dozens of other print and television sources.

In my view, Happyness needed an ending that caught you off guard. I didn’t need to be surprised, but it would have been more forceful without all the advance warning from Gardner's promotional efforts. What's missing from Happyness is a little sensitivity from the promotional staff.

Finally, Happyness has the R-word in it spoken matter-of-factly by Jaden; he’s reading graffiti from a door near his day care. Why oh why does Hollywood feel obliged to do this?

Pursuit of Happyness is rated PG-13 for some language.

DMR grades Pursuit of Happyness a B-.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Pursuit of Happyness was downgraded. Promoted more sensitively and sans the R-word, I would have graded it as a B+.

Happy Feet with Elijah Wood, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman and Robin Williams

Dance Your Way to the Theater for This Fun.. er.. Movie

Earlier in my career I remember sitting in a video edit suite editing a video for Merck or someone similarly corporate. We had a series of images… no talking head at all… and we were cutting the video to the beats of a driving soundtrack. And I realized, my golly, I’m editing a music video!

I had much the same feeling as I was watching Happy Feet, the Oscar-winning penguin-powered cute-fest finally at dollar theaters. Happy Feet is a 109-minute music video.

Oh there’s spoken dialogue and a sort of quest-for-redemption plotline that links the musical numbers. But the movie frequently bogs down whenever the characters are talking.

Moreover because the sound editors put the soundtrack so far in front of everything else the dialog is frequently hard to hear.

So like any music video the real question is, do you like the music?

Happy Feet has quite a potpourri including: The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Chicago, Rodgers and Hart, Elvis, Earth, Wind and Fire, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Queen, and Xavier Cugat; but the music of Prince and Stevie Wonder figure especially prominently.

The movie concerns one Mumble (Elijah Wood) and emperor penguin and son of Memphis (Hugh Jackman doing Elvis) and Norma Rae (Nicole Kidman doing Marilyn Monroe). Robin Williams performs almost every other voice. In Mumble’s colony, every penguin must find his heartsong and then share it with a mate, but Mumble’s heartsong is a fiercely unpleasant squawk.

His heartsong, as it turns out, is that he can dance like Savion Glover (who performed Mumble’s motion capture dancing). Mumble loves the honeyed-voice Gloria (Brittany Murphy, who can really sing) but the colony, and indeed the whole of the Antarctic is suffering from a chronic lack of fish.

The colony elders blame the song-less Mumble. But Mumble suspects there’s more to it than that and pursues a fleet of factory fishing vessels so as to communicate the colony’s needs to the aliens.

There are several song and dance scenes that are so precious you want to pinch the penguin’s little cheeks. Indeed, it’s said that Prince wasn’t going to allow the use of his song “Kiss,” but was shown an early preview and was so charmed that he wrote an original song for the movie that runs during the credits.

The environmental message is very clear, but director George Miller takes a spoonful of sugar approach that softens the enviro-moralizing.

Special kudos goes to John Powell who composed the soundtrack and made the transitions between the various rock songs so seamless. Many of his arrangements should find their way to the concert hall.

Happy Feet is rated PG for some mild peril and rude humor.

DMR grades Happy Feet a B+.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Happy Feet was upgraded. Otherwise, I would have graded it as a B.