當(dāng)幸福來敲門經(jīng)典電影英文影評

2023年12月4日發(fā)(作者：病人)

當(dāng)幸福來敲門英文影評(2006)

With a title like The Pursuit of Happyness, you expect the characters to get to the promid land. They do,

but if the journey matters more than the destination, this is a movie to skip. The Pursuit of Happyness is

long, dull, and depressing. It expands into two hours a story that could have been told more effectively in

one. This is not the feel-good movie of the ason unless you believe that a few moments of good cheer

can redeem 110 minutes of gloom. Sitting through The Pursuit of Happyness is a chore. Downbeat movies

aren't inherently bad (in fact, many are powerful), but this one provides artificial characters in contrived

circumstances. How is it that movies "inspired by a real story" often feel more fake than tho fully

embedded in the realm of fiction?

Will Smith has generated Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Chris Gardner, the real-life guy who

rags-to-riches story forms the basis of the movie. (Impoverished guy becomes capitalist poster boy.)

While it's fair to say that this is one of the best straight performances of Smith's career, it didn't blow me

away. In and of itlf, the acting, while effective, is not Best Actor material, but it wouldn't surpri me if

the movie's prestige factor and Smith's popularity earn him a nod. Meanwhile, his female co-star,

Thandie Newton, isn't going to be considered for any award. Newton spends about 90% of her screen

time doing an impersonation of a harpy: screeching, bitching, and contorting her face into unpleasant

expressions. Smith's son, Jaden, is okay as the movie's child protagonist; it's unclear whether his

occasional deficiencies are the result of his acting, Steven Conrad's writing, or Gabriele Muccino's

direction, but there's not much personality behind the cute features and curly hair.

1

Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is down on his luck. It's 1981 San Francisco and his lf-employed business of

lling portable bone density scanners isn't doing well. His wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), does nothing

but yell at him and give him a cold shoulder, and the lack of domestic harmony is impacting the

disposition of his beloved son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith). That's when Chris' life turns

into a country song. His wife leaves. He is evicted from his home. He goes to jail, neither passing GO nor

collecting a much-needed $200. He gets hit by a car. He is robbed. He makes his son cry. He alienates a

friend over $14. He gets to spend a night in the cleanest public restroom in the history of public

restrooms. But there's a bright spot, although you need a dark-adapted eye to find it. Despite having no

experience, Chris applies to enter an internship program at Dean Witter. He would appear to have no

chance to get in until he amazes the head of the program (Brian Howe) by solving the Rubik's Cube puzzle

in the back of a taxi cab.

It's a blessing that the movie doesn't u a stock villain to impede Chris' herky-jerky trip to the top,

becau that would have tipped the movie into the empire of the unwatchable. However, the lack of a

strong conflict makes the two-hour running length em very long. Thankfully, there's also not much in

the way of overt melodrama, but that could be a byproduct of having characters who are not deeply

realized and have narrow emotional ranges. It's tough to connect with Chris and his son. Although they

are played by a real-life father and son, there's no chemistry between them. We're constantly told how

desperately Chris loves Christopher, but it takes a long time before we begin to buy it. Most of the time,

Christopher ems like an annoying piece of baggage that Chris drops off at daycare when he has other

things to do.

The film's most compelling scenes are tho that show Chris struggling to enter the rat race. Granted,

this is no Glengarry Glen Ross, but it shows the pressure the salesmen are under and how important

the contact lists are. In the overall scheme of things, however, the quences are background noi.

They are neither plentiful nor lengthy. The movie spends more time following Chris on his futile sales

rounds for the bone density scanner than it does accompanying him during his broker training.

The moral of the story is as trite as they come: don't let anyone convince you to give up on your dreams.

Disney animated films have been doing this better for decades. The Pursuit of Happyness concludes with

a caption that tells us what happens to Chris after the end of the movie; it promis a better story than

the one we have just watched. The film is also marred by a persistent (although not verbo) voiceover

that adds nothing to the story while frequently jerking us out of the experience of watching it. I don't

need Will Smith telling me: "This part of the story is called 'riding the bus.'"

This is the English-language debut of Gabriele Muccino, who has made a name for himlf in Italian

cinema. The Pursuit of Happyness has the kind of slow, drab tone one occasionally associates with a

director raid outside of the Hollywood system. What can be an ast in some circumstances is a

detriment in this one. The Pursuit of Happyness isn't enjoyable, and its meager pleasures, including the

eventual "payoff," aren't enough to justify the unrelenting miry. The Pursuit of Happyness is

competently made and gets lots of the details right, but when it comes to the emotional core of the story,

it los the pursuit and miss the "happyness."

2