‘Happyness’ a downer

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, December 14, 2006

You know what kind of movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” is from the opening credits: winsome lower-case lettering, and that hesitant, tinkly piano music that tells you something sensitive is going to be happening.

Yes, this is a heart-tugging character study, kept watchable by the commitment of lead actor Will Smith and the real-life grit behind the story. “Pursuit” is based on the life of Chris Gardner, a man who found dire straits in San Francisco in the early 1980s. Screenwriter Steven Conrad (“The Weather Man”) embellished Gardner’s real story with some sizable inventions.

Will Smith, naturally, plays Gardner. When we meet him, he lives with his 5-year-old son (played by Smith’s real-life kid, Jaden Smith) and the boy’s mother (Thandie Newton). He’s also stuck with a hapless nightmare of a freelance job, selling expensive bone-density scanners that nobody wants.

He’s no longer young, and worn down by life. Almost on a whim, he decides to apply for an internship program to become a stockbroker at the big-time firm of Dean Witter.

His wife thinks this is ridiculous; the internship is unpaid, and the family is being evicted. How can he possibly pull it off, especially without a guarantee of a job at the end of the six months?

This becomes even more grueling than it sounds, especially when actual homelessness becomes part of Gardner’s life. In fact, this movie turns into one awful thing after another, with the repetitive business of Gardner trying to sell his cursed scanners a kind of recurring nightmare from which he can’t wake up.

Just about the only relief from this treadmill of hustling is a comic episode surrounding Gardner’s first interview with Dean Witter, which follows hard upon his arrest for unpaid parking tickets. Even here, the comedy is laced with anxiety.

There’s also a terrific sequence with Gardner, who’s always fancied himself good with numbers, solving a Rubik’s Cube (remember those?) in the back of a taxi with a Dean Witter honcho looking on. Even here, the sequence has a downbeat kicker: Gardner doesn’t have cab fare.

Will Smith has always had a glad-handing manner of a born salesman, so this role fits him nicely. He frequently finds himself running madly down a San Francisco street, and Smith is such a good physical actor he makes these sprints into an epic journey.

The film is directed by Italy’s Gabriele Muccino, who made the entertaining if superficial “Last Kiss” (recently remade by Hollywood). He has a talent for pathos, and he brings off the final gratifying reel. But the movie serves up so much hardship before then it becomes almost masochistic.

And “happyness”? The misspelling is explained early on, although the title won’t do any favors for national literacy. It fits: This movie is all about the pursuit, not the happiness.

Will Smith and his son, Jaden Smith, star in “The Pursuit of Happyness.”