The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

Struggling medical supplies salesman -- here, kind of like an encyclopedia salesman with a smaller clientele -- is drowning in debt despite his wife's two jobs and his incredible work ethic. Life slams him around hard and fast. His wife leaves him, one of his units gets stolen twice, he's jailed for unpaid parking tickets, he's evicted twice, and he's towing around his five-year-old son in the evenings. A huge opportunity to intern as a stockbroker at Dean Witter comes up, but there's no paycheck involved and no guarantee that he'll be the lucky hire out of the group of interns.

This based on a true story movie is inspirational as can be, but it's also kind of hard to get into it when you know how it's gonna work out. Will Smith is flat-out fantastic here. Each emotion he displays -- and this script calls for the whole gamut -- feels real. There are a couple of scenes that particularly blew me away: when he's almost tossed out of the homeless shelter line for fighting and his final meeting with the Dean Witter bigwigs.

The film is hurt by its length and the fact that cute little Jaden Smith, Will's real-life son playing his on-screen son, is not yet a convincing actor.

B+