The pursit of happyness

The Pursuit of Happyness is a 2006 American biographical drama film based on Chris Gardner's nearly one-year struggle with homelessness. The film features Will Smith as Gardner, an on-and-off-homeless salesman-turned stockbroker. Smith's real-life son Jaden Smith co-stars, making his film debut as Gardner's son Christopher Jr.

The Plot :
In 1981, in San Francisco, Chris Gardner (Will Smith) invests his family's savings in portable bone-density scanners which he tries to demonstrate and sell to doctors. The investment proves to be a white elephant which financially breaks the family and as a result, his wife Linda leaves him with their son Christopher (Jaden Smith) and moves to New York.

While downtown trying to sell one of his scanners, Chris meets a manager for Dean Witter and impresses him by solving a Rubik's Cube during a short cab ride. This new relationship with the Dean Witter manager earns him the chance to become an intern stockbroker. Chris does not have enough money for the cab fare and flees the cab driver into a subway station where he barely escapes the cab driver but loses one of his bone scanners in the process. Chris is further set back when his bank account is garnished by the IRS for unpaid taxes, and he and his young son are evicted and become homeless.

He finally gets the internship for stockbroker. Disadvantaged by his limited work hours, and knowing that maximizing his client contacts and profits is the only way to earn the one paid position that he and his 19 competitors are fighting for, Chris develops a number of ways to make phone sales calls more efficiently. He also reaches out to potential high value customers, defying protocol. Regardless of Chris's challenges, he never reveals his lowly circumstances to his co-workers, even going so far as to lend one of his bosses five dollars for a cab, a sum he can barely afford.

Concluding his internship, Chris is called into a meeting with his managers. His work has paid off and he is offered the position. Fighting back tears, he rushes to his son's daycare, hugging him. They walk down the street, joking with each other and are passed by a man in a business suit (the real Chris Gardner in a cameo). The epilogue reveals that Chris went on to form his own multi-million dollar brokerage firm.

The beauty of the film is its honesty. This success story follows the pattern most common in life — it chronicles a series of soul-sickening failures and defeats, missed opportunities, sure things that didn't quite happen, all of which are accompanied by a concomitant accretion of barely perceptible victories that gradually amount to something. In other words, it all feels real. Father Will seldom comes across this mature on screen; at the finale, he achieves a measure of Oscar-worthy emotion. Little Jaden is a chip off the old block, uncommonly at ease before the cameras. Their real-life bond is an inestimable asset to the on-screen characters.
My verdict : A very touching and inspirational story convincingly told. Must see for all.