The Pursuit of Happyness: I want my money back!

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Getting my money back would make me slightly happier. This film goes on for ages, some dude makes everyone he knows suffer so he can become a millionaire. If I was the kid I would harbour deep resentment for the loss of my Captain America figure. He shouldn't have squandered his savings on those x-ray machines in the first place. Then we're supposed to hate his wife for leaving him!

And, I felt sure that they would have Will Smith's "Just the two of us" as the theme tune.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 15 January 2007 18:03 (nineteen years ago)

If you saw this on purpose, you deserve to suffer. My gracious, what part of the ad campaign could fail to warn you that this would suck beyond measure?

― Candy: tastes like chicken, if chicken was a candy. (Austin, Still), Monday, 15 January 2007 18:15 (nineteen years ago)

I dunno. I knew I shoulda watched that new Jessica Simpson film :(

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 15 January 2007 18:19 (nineteen years ago)

I had to see it because I was visiting my inlaws for christmas, but it's down there with the all-time worst films I have ever seen in my lifetime. Not just bad but totally wrong and depressing and repulsive. The treatment and "message" made me physically sick.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS

― Rebel.yell.For.Internet.cakes (nordicskilla), Monday, 15 January 2007 18:19 (nineteen years ago)

austin otm

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Monday, 15 January 2007 18:20 (nineteen years ago)

Re: the ad campaign, I thought it'd be so bad it'd be funny.

― jel -- (jel), Monday, 15 January 2007 18:21 (nineteen years ago)

is there a reason for the title spelling?

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 09:32 (nineteen years ago)

I was wondering about that, too.

― Hello Sunshine (Hello Sunshine), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 09:35 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/trivia

"The spelling error in the title is intentional: it refers to an important scene in the movie, in which children are writing words such as Happyness on the wall, and is mentioned to them it doesn't matter how it is spelled."

...Though I saw it and don't actually remember this. As best I remember, it's just a word on a mural in the Chinatown area where he takes his son for daycare. He complains about it because it's a typo, and it seems simply to emphasize that pedantic and education-loving side of his personality. He's pretty smug with the guy that sweeps in front of the wall, and the whole thing is unflattering.

― Peter Densmore (pbnmyj), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 09:45 (nineteen years ago)

it doesn't matter how it is spelled

ohhhh this stuff makes me crazy.

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 09:47 (nineteen years ago)

ANYBODY WHO HATES THIS MOVIE IS A COMMUNIST

― God Bows to Meth (noodle vague), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 10:42 (nineteen years ago)

HOORAYYY!!!

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 10:43 (nineteen years ago)

from the advert it seems to be about one man's struggle to become a stockbroker, because stockbrokers have nice cars?

what the fuck.

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 10:44 (nineteen years ago)

Based on a true story...

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 10:55 (nineteen years ago)

No, no. Stockbrokers are witty. It's just about one man finding his crew.

― Peter Densmore (pbnmyj), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 11:13 (nineteen years ago)

it should be about one man finding a cashew.

― vita susicivus (blueski), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 11:15 (nineteen years ago)

Stockbrokers are witty

if you say.

― the original hauntology blogging crew (Enrique), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 11:15 (nineteen years ago)

"Pursuit of Hollywood Cash"
A millionaire plays a poor guy trying to be a millionaire - the movie should end with the video for "Parents Just Dont UNderstand"

― Latham Green (mike), Tuesday, 16 January 2007 15:24 (nineteen years ago)

two months pass...

I really, really liked this film. You don't have to subscribe to any kind of right-wing interpretation of the American Dream to get a lot out of it. I think people who criticise it on those grounds are completely missing the humanity of the film; a story about a father and son (beautifully played, and not schmaltzy, I guess the casting helps) and about human spirit. If inspirational tales of triumph over adversity only ever meet with snarky dismissals about how that kind of moral is all a pernicious con, then I think things have gone wrong somewhere. No, being a stockbroker, or even rich, is not my dream, but I think the film did a great job of making you understand why it was Gardner's.

As for criticisms that the whole story arc is predictable and Hollywoody, I think it avoids that by framing the whole story clearly in the past. It doesn't insult you by trying to make you go through the pretence not knowing that it will have a happy ending. The music and voiceover give the whole thing a reflective, distant quality, maybe just how those times would feel if you were a millionaire looking back on them.

― Alba, Monday, 19 March 2007 18:40 (eighteen years ago)

i liked this a lot too. sort of tough to watch if you empathize, always on the edge of panic, just really well made and well written and acted too.

― ryan, Monday, 19 March 2007 23:23 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

Probably the most depressing movie I've seen all year.

― calstars, Sunday, 4 January 2009 03:44 (seventeen years ago)

one year passes...

ANytime I mention being short on cash my mom tells me to watch this movie.

― Mormons come out of the sky and they stand there (Abbbottt), Saturday, 18 September 2010 03:12 (fifteen years ago)

They built a realistic (but artificial) BART station in the park by my old house for this movie. I wish they had a put a real station there! c'mon hollywood!

― Fartbritz Sootzveti (Steve Shasta), Saturday, 18 September 2010 03:25 (fifteen years ago)

Rebel.yell.For.Internet.cakes otm

― Hymie in Galveston (admrl), Saturday, 18 September 2010 18:22 (fifteen years ago)

six years pass...

lol this movie

― Neanderthal, Monday, 19 December 2016 02:34 (nine years ago)

happyness with a y, lookin' pretty fly, solve a rubik's cube right in front of your eye

― Einstein, Kazanga, Sitar (abanana), Monday, 19 December 2016 03:24 (nine years ago)

if you like naive, hamfisted, feel-good morality fed to you with a spoon and missed Happyness, never fear for Collateral Beauty is in theatres now, starring the one and only!

― rip van wanko, Monday, 19 December 2016 07:26 (nine years ago)

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