posted
Hmm, surprised a thread about this movie hasn't surfaced yet (at least not one I recall or that the search can find).
Saw this movie the past weekend after catching a few reviews and interviews with the crew associated with it. It's good. That's an understatement, it's really good. It's also a fairly brutal look at the American Dream. It will make you wonder just how many obstacles you would have bothered to attempt to overcome, and if there was any way possible to give up when you didn't overcome one.
At the very least, Will Smith deserves an Oscar nomination for taking on a role for which he wouldn't be a shoe in. Jamie Fox in Ray and Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind come to mind in a similar fashion. Smith said that having his son in the scenes with him made it easier to imaging the pain and difficulties that Gardner had to go through. Whether that is true or not, he displays the highs and the lows equally well.
Just curious as to the general Hatrackian response to this movie? Good? Bad? Emotionally draining?
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I liked the trailer for it, but my girlfriend and I are going to watch Casino Royale instead this weekend. Maybe sometime later next week.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Yeah, in a roundabout way I suppose there is...
I've spent so many years working against my nature to spell words correctly, I refuse to break it even for a title. The typo stays. Heck, maybe it'll get people into my threads where as my username usually scares them off.
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I want to see it but I'm using up my free babysitting allowance for the next three months asking my mom to babysit all day in Jan. while we go to the Temple for our stake's Temple Jubilee celebration (I get to sing in the choir! In the Temple!) So we'll Netflix it when it's out on DVD.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:I want to see it but I'm using up my free babysitting allowance for the next three months asking my mom to babysit all day in Jan.
It's reading things like this that make me reflect on the fact that my oldest daughter is now old enough to watch the young ones for an evening and smile.
It gets better kq, one day you wont' need to pay for babysitters. In the mean time, enjoy your free babysitting day at the Temple and congrats on singing in the choir! I don't sing in our church choir (don't think my voice is good enough) but I teach choir to 3rd-6th graders and love it.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Architraz Warden: At the very least, Will Smith deserves an Oscar nomination for taking on a role for which he wouldn't be a shoe in.
Um, isn't it his project entirely?
I haven't seen it yet (maybe this weekend), but I've been looking forward to it for months.
quote:Originally posted by Belle: It's reading things like this that make me reflect on the fact that my oldest daughter is now old enough to watch the young ones for an evening and smile.
posted
No spoilers really, just impressions of how it went.
I didn't like it.
It was one long, big, sad, depressing story. There's a teeny little light at the end of the tunnel, then the movie ends.
I thought that after watching that long of a sob fest, I deserved at least ten minutes of seeing him happy, but nope, the lights come on, and it's over. Good job to Will Smith, and especially his son, for the good acting and all, but I didn't like the movie, and have zero intention of ever seeing it again.
I say this by the way, as a huge fan of Will Smith's movies, and as someone who has been looking forward to this movie for months. If they added 10 minutes onto the end I'd probably have liked it a lot more.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
10 minutes of what? Smiling? Hugging his son? Running on a beach? I mean, he reached his goal. You could see in his eyes and in his tears that he reached happyness. Beating you over the head that he was now HAPPY wouldn't have really helped the movie at all.
I think it ended at the perfect time. If it showed him too long at "being happy" and he audience's perception of him would change from "one of us who reached the top" to "one of those rich guys."
Posts: 450 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:...the red sports car that he saw at the beginning of the movie.
Also, if there's a red sports car in the movie, it's bound to have some spoilers. Wouldn't be much of a sports car otherwise.
But seriously, I haven't seen this movie yet, as it isn't playing in any theatres in the vicinity right now. But I'm definitely planning to go and watch this one.
Posts: 993 | Registered: Jul 2006
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I was pretty dissapointed in this movie... I mean the acting was great and the little boy was adorable but I was expecting it to be really really sad (I never wanted to cry), and then really really happy, but it seemed to coast right along depressing. It wasn't horrible but not something I'd buy or even care about seeing again.
Posts: 143 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
What's depressing is watching this guy whore around for two hours. (The movie is playing in the background.) Even if he gets the internship and all the money that comes with the job, if this is the American dream, what kind of country are we living in. One where money does buy happiness, I guess, and the zealous pursuit of it is somehow honorable.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I hated the Pursuit of Happyness. Watching it for me was an unbelievable chore. Here's why:
First of all, people get jobs every day. There is nothing extraordinary about a guy trying to get a job. We follow him sucking up pathetically to his bosses, BS-ing his way through job interviews, being cutthroat with his competitors. This is a movie? Why is this a movie?
Of course, it's a movie because of the kid. We're supposed to be rooting for the guy no matter how slick, no matter how desperate, and no matter how ugly his behavior becomes -- all because of the kid.
But, see, I just couldn't do that. I just couldn't root for this slippery guy -- because there was absolutely no reason for the kid to be in any danger.
It's his own selfishness that is putting the kid in danger. He's not the hero rescuing the kid from hard circumstances -- he's the villain who put the kid into the hard circumstances to begin with, the way I see it.
His wife leaves him because she's fed up with working eighteen hours a day every day, pulling double-shifts to try to pay the rent while he rides around on a bus chasing some pipe dream of selling this equipment? Bull crap. A real man, a man who cared about the well-being of his family, would have put the pipe dream on hold, and gone out and got a job. You don't follow your dreams to the point that it destroys your family.
Then he basically kidnaps the kid from daycare rather than letting the wife look after him, and he insists, no matter what, even when he's being evicted and is about to become homeless, on keeping the kid with him. If I was becoming homeless, and my wife was moving back East to live with family, I'd say, "Take the kid with you," -- maybe not ideal but at least he'd have a roof over his head and some family to look after him while I got back on my feet.
But no -- this scumbag insists on keeping the kid, thereby causing the kid yet another problem, on top of the fact that his (the Dad's) own selfishness caused the breakup of the family: homelessness.
What a bunch of crap. I felt nothing but anger at this selfish, foolish man endangering the welfare of his son over and over again.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:First of all, people get jobs every day. There is nothing extraordinary about a guy trying to get a job...His wife leaves him because she's fed up with working eighteen hours a day every day, pulling double-shifts to try to pay the rent while he rides around on a bus chasing some pipe dream of selling this equipment? Bull crap. A real man, a man who cared about the well-being of his family, would have put the pipe dream on hold, and gone out and got a job. You don't follow your dreams to the point that it destroys your family.
I don't know if it's that simple.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
The spelling of the title and Will Smith's hair both make me cringe. As a result, I have yet to see it. Honestly, I didn't think it seemed like something I could sit through.
quote:Originally posted by pH: The spelling of the title and Will Smith's hair both make me cringe. As a result, I have yet to see it. Honestly, I didn't think it seemed like something I could sit through.
-pH
Me too!
I probably will get around to seeing it one day though. It seems like a very touching movie.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Trying to get a "real" job with a high school diploma, being black, dubious skills, and limited connections isn't always the easiest thing in the world, especially a job with decent mobility. Putting his dream on hold is a nice enough idea, but you are talking about putting it on hold for 15+ years, then he is all of that and old to boot. This exact situation breaks up marriages all of the time. The wife isn't a bad woman for leaving him, and he isn't a bad guy for going for the internship. It's a tragic situation. Not only did it break up my parents marriage, it's one of the reasons I don't get married. That part was sympathetic. I just wish he had a better goal.
My problem is that he did it all to be a stockbroker. What a blah inspiration. It's funny. This could have easily been "The Rookie" with Marky Mark, and I would have enjoyed it more, and I don't even like football. Gardner made some real sacrifices to excel, but the effort is poisoned because I think he picked a ho-hum dream. There is something downright unmusical about selling stocks for Dean Witter.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
It doesn't make much of a difference, and I could be wrong, but I didn't think they were married.
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Me too!
