Cast and Crew:

Language: English

Starring:

Will Smith as Chris Gardner

Jaden Christopher Syre Smith as Christopher Gardner, Jr.

Thandie Newton as Linda Gardner

Direction: Gabriele Muccino

Screenplay: Steven Conrad

Music: William Francis

Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael

Editing: Hughes Winborne

A movie released 14 years back… still, here I am writing a review for it in the 21st century, a time and era where movies use paid promotions. An amazing fact about any art is its ability to stay influential across different decades and across different parts of the world. That is when a movie has truly achieved its Oscar.

This is a movie that portrays the life of an American during the 80s and it has influenced me born in the 90s. Truly amazing!

Plot:

Chris Gardner starts narrating his life story with the punchline: “I met my father for the first time when I was 28 years old and I made up my mind as a young kid that when I have children, my children were gonna know who their father was.”

Chris Grander works as a salesman, selling portable bone-density scanners. He struggles to sell the scanners and all his life’s savings is invested in it. He has no other source of income undoubtedly leading to financial trouble in the family. Chris’ wife, Linda works as a hotel maid, does double shifts, gets frustrated with all the hard work she puts in and struggles to face the reality that nothing works out for Chris.

Chris continues giving in everything from meeting doctors every day, demonstrating the mechanism and even fixing the faulty ones. Along with that, Chris keeps trying for other jobs as well. Finally, he gets an opportunity to join a brokerage firm for a 6 months internship. He knows that this is a life-changing opportunity, but worries about how to work it out as it is an unpaid internship. Linda on hearing this questions him: “From the salesman to an internship?”. Realizing how frustrated Linda is Chris understands that there is no point in trying to convince her.

Linda leaves them and moves to another city and Chris joins the internship. However, he fails to pay the home rent and gets kicked out. As a result, they move to a motel and the same situation repeats. Eventually, nights are spent in local homeless shelters and sometimes even in subway washrooms. Through all this Chris continues with the internship, drops and picks Christopher at the day care, meets doctors to sell scanners and literally runs to get shelter.

Throughout the film, we too feel the suffocation and tiredness when Chris is running, we are touched when Chris is helpless. We feel sad when the 5-year-old Christopher loses his toy captain America on the road while running to the homeless shelter. Throughout this trouble Chris remains optimistic, continues to work hard and does not blame anyone for his situation. His genuine and impressive people skills gains him a good client base who sign the contract with the brokerage firm.

The internship finally gets over; the manager calls Chris for a meeting and tells him “Tomorrow’s going to be your first day, if you’d like to work as a broker. Was it as easy as it looked?” Chris replies: “No sir”. Instead of smiling, Chris was struggling not to cry with wet eyes. This part had me in tears, tears I could not withhold anymore.

Chris the father

Almost all scenes in the movie are shared by Will Smith and Jaden Smith as father and son duo. The fact that they share the same bond, in reality, made it more natural and touching for sure. The movie tells how amazing Chris is as a father, in the middle of all his struggle. Few scenes which kind of engrave the genuine fatherly feelings-

Chris asks the cleaning guy that the f word on the wall at day care must be cleared and the spelling in the word ‘happyness’ should be corrected.
He shares his concern with the day care teacher knowing they are showing ‘Love boat’ TV series there. Consequently, he corrects the teacher when she says that Love boat is about history and questions why he should send his kid to day care when he can watch TV shows at home.
Yet another scene: Christopher refuses to practice shooting the ball on the basketball court. Chris says, “Don’t ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something, not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you can’t do it. You want something, go get it, period.”

Finale:

We all struggle in life to achieve our dreams, we fail, we end up helpless, we may lose faith but we continue fighting and achieve it one day. According to Chris: “You got a dream, you got to protect it. And when you’re done, ask yourself: Was it as easy as it looked?”

The life of Chris Gardner, his struggles, his hard work, perseverance and his pursuit for happiness has given me some important life lessons on optimism, being a father and mostly how to be an amazing human being. Watch it to feel the inspiration and be touched!

Review By:

The Local Fellow