There’s a really weird part in this week’s nominee for the Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time, The Pursuit of Happyness. Will Smith’s character, Chris Gardner, is a single father now, after his wife left him, doing his best to raise his son while pursuing an ambitious and unlikely career change. His son asks if they can go play basketball, so they go to a scenic rooftop basketball court that overlooks the city of San Francisco. Incidentally, despite being entirely broke and practically homeless, Will Smith and his son (both fictional and real, because Chris Gardner’s son is played by Will Smith’s son) have an entire scenic rooftop basketball court to themselves? (I’m not saying that I fully understand the class distinctions of scenic rooftop basketball courts overlooking the entire city of San Francisco, or that this is unrealistic, it just seems like maybe there’d be at least a couple more people up there trying to play basketball on a weekend?) But anyway: Jaden Smith is talking about how much he likes playing basketball and how one day he’s going to be a basketball star, to which Will Smith replies “well, I was never very good at basketball, so you’ll probably not be very good at basketball either. You might be a little bit better than average at basketball, but you should probably stop playing basketball because of how bad you’re almost certainly going to be at it.” This makes Jaden Smith sad. You know, because of how IT’S AN INCREDIBLY TERRIBLE AND ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY THING TO SAY TO A CHILD WHO SIMPLY EXPRESSED HIS LOVE OF A GAME YOU WERE IN THE MIDST OF PLAYING TOGETHER. After a moment of reflection and realization, Will Smith looks very meaningful and kind of tearfully at his son, and he tells him never to let anyone tell him what he can and can’t do, not even his father. Sure. I guess. Except that there’s a really big difference between letting someone tell you what you can or can’t do, and having your father just be really straight-forward in an intensely aggressive way about the harsh realities of life. But the real problem with this scene is just that it doesn’t make any sense. He could have given his son that valuable life lesson without awkwardly setting it up through clunky dialogue. No one would have had a problem with a scene where Jaden said he wanted to play basketball and Will Smith said “OK, follow your dreams. You are my son and I support you, and as it happens, I, too am trying to follow my dreams, so I know how hard that can be and how important it is to feel that your loved ones are on your side.” Slow clap, I’m sure. Instead, the entire thing was framed in heavy-handed, unrealistic bullshit to bloody you upside the head with a point that’s not even that original or particularly useful as a human being trying to make sense of the world we live in (it may or may not be worth noting that Chris Gardner’s son is not a professional basketball player).

And that is why that scene is a perfect example of what is wrong with this movie. For more examples, follow the jump.

The Pursuit of Happyness is based on the true life story of Chris Gardner, who had a pretty rough time of it in the early 1980s but eventually went on to start his own stock brokerage firm and become a millionaire. Fair enough. As the movie opens, Chris is selling bone density scanners, but it’s not going very well. Then one day, he sees a really shitty looking asshole driving a really fancy car, and he decides he wants to be a shitty asshole, so he applies for a competitive internship program at a stock broker place. At first everyone is like, haha, no way, but then he solves a Rubik’s Cube in a taxi? So now he is in the internship program. But now his life leaves him. And now he is evicted from his apartment. And now he can’t even afford the motel he is staying in, so he and his son sleep in a subway bathroom. Admittedly, it really does not look like a particularly fun time. Meanwhile, in addition to working very hard at the competitive stock broker internship (which is unpaid, and from the pool of 20 only one candidate is selected for an actual job), Chris continues trying to sell bone density scanners, which he keeps having to steal back from hippies and homeless people (LONG STORY) and also sleeping in a homeless shelter. But all along the way, he keeps working just as hard as he can, and believing that he can achieve something important and provide a good life for his son. Unfortunately, in the movie’s climactic scene, Chris is denied the stock broker job, and he ends up homeless and alone (because his son dies of embarrassment). JUST KIDDING! He gets the job! Congratulations, Chris!

I will just say this right here: it’s fine. The movie’s fine. The story is fine. The acting is a little MUCH but ultimately is fine. Even Jaden Smith: fine. It’s far from the Worst Movie of All Time (although it definitely has a lot of the defining characteristics that make it a perfect nominee, including Serious Subject, Poverty, and American Dreams.) But that’s not to say that it is particularly good, or without some very serious problems.

Let’s start with the day that Chris Gardner first seems that shithead in his shitmobile:


Uh….WE ALL KNOW WHAT FUCKING STOCK BROKERS ARE? Like, it’s fine for this guy to be walking down the street and decide that he’s fed up with a life of poverty (although, the system is pretty carefully designed and has been reinforced institutionally over hundreds of years and across the globe to ensure that it doesn’t really matter whether he is fed up or not) but can we not pretend like these mysterious “Stock Brokers” are a group of notoriously happy people? They’re fucking assholes! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, FOR SURE, WITHOUT EXCEPTION! Honestly, though, Stock Brokers throw themselves through windows. And they’re pretty widely known to sacrifice any semblance of a personal/family life in their insatiable pursuit of money. So enough with the “happiness” thing. If you want the car, go get the car, but leave contentment out of it.

Which naturally brings us to the fallacy of the whole American Dream thing in the first place. For as much as this film tries to take a “serious” look at the hardships of poverty and the sacrifices less fortunate people must make in their attempts to become millionaires or even just to not have to sleep in a subway station bathroom anymore, the whole thing is a fucking lie. Regardless of what happened to Chris Gardner, the larger truth of wealth, poverty, and economic disparity in this country (and do not even let’s get started on the World At Large, in which millions of people are starving to death and have no access to drinking water, much less medical treatment or education) is that it’s nearly impossible to move between economic classes, and that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try and that we shouldn’t applaud them when they succeed, but it’s not like people are poor just because they don’t run as much as Chris Gardner was always running.

About that: they seriously should have called this movie The Pursuit of Joggyness. You know, because of all the jogging. Each of these images is for a separate scene in the movie:

(It’s also weird when Chris Gardner is running to ditch a cab ride that he can’t afford, as if the cab driver doesn’t have his own problems, or when Gardner is chasing after an unmedicated homeless man trying to get back the bone density scanner that could be the difference between providing food and a roof over his son’s head, and jaunty caper music plays in the background? Cool capers! Terrifying poverty makes for the jauntiest chases!)

The movie also does one of my least favorite things, which is to establish a character’s intelligence through the use of a fucking prop. Chris Gardner, for example, is a math genius. We know this because he can solve a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. SUUUUURE.

Whatever. At least he wasn’t writing out math equation’s on his son’s face with a grease pencil. But it’s still pretty lazy. (Especially because the first time he encounters one is at his apartment, because his wife, who works in a SWEAT SHOP, got one as a random gift from a co-worker? No she didn’t. Nope. She did not get the “Must Have” novelty toy of the decade from someone else at the sweat shop for no reason.) Of course, even if this was normal and realistic and true, which it’s not, then it actually complicates things further in terms of the takeaway of Chris Gardner’s “inspirational” story. Because what it now says is that in order to make your dreams come true, you need to secretly be a math genius who just happens to share a cab with the gatekeeper to his dreams at the height of a new toy’s craze and that gatekeeper needs to have an infant’s sense of wonder to the point where he will definitely try and help you out with your dreams because of how impressed he is with your ability to solve puzzles made for children. WE’RE GOING TO NEED SOME BIGGER BOOTSTRAPS!

Of course, if you really want to make some money in this world, what you should do is cast your own child in your multi-million dollar Hollywood movie at scale and keep that shit in the family. Dreams really do come true!

Ultimately, The Pursuit of Happyness is pretty standard and forgettable Hollywood melodrama. It’s not even that deeply offensive and misguided and distracting from the genuine problems of poverty in America if you don’t think about it at all. Which you shouldn’t. It’s a waste of time. You should be out in those streets, HUSTLING!

Next week: Nothing But Trouble. As always, please leave your suggestions in the comments or in an email. And if you haven’t done so already, please consult the Official Rules.

Comments (146)
  1. Running with Scissors. Ryan Murphy is very terrible at his job.

    • I wrote a pretty scathing review of this movie for my University’s “paper.” Of course, my rage was partly induced by how badly they managed to botch the adaptation. No feel for nuance there. Let’s just take the book word for word and put it on the screen with bad actors and make absolutely no choices.

      Ugh. I second this nomination.

  2. The worst part of the email is the spelling in the title.

  3. Gabe misspelled “American Dreamz.” And with that, nominated.

  4. Be that as it may, I am interested in the direction the sequel, The Fur Suit Of Happyness, is taking:

  5. I was lost after I saw that primo parking spot that the asshole stock broker got, because those spots simply don’t exist; sadly the movie does.

    • YES! Goddammit if one more movie or car commercial shows anyone anywhere in San Francisco parking easily I am going to go outside, walk the seventeen blocks to my car, and start running people over.

  6. Has anyone nominated the Love Guru yet? Let’s do that one b/c it’s really really really really (I could go on forever…) terrible.

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  8. Everyone knows the best way to show how smart a character is in a movie is by having them write formulas on windows.


    Pursuit of Happyness, you’re doing it wrong.

  9. Rubik’s Cubes have always been a code for gatekeepers to know when to Let the Right One In.


    Sorry (Not sorry.)

    • I really love solving rubiks cubes

    • I finally saw Let The Right One In a couple weeks ago. It was SO GOOD! I finally got around to it because Let Me In was about to be released, and the trailers kept showing stuff (HOSPITAL BED ON FIRE) that really piqued my curiosity, and I finally sat down to see what HOLLYSNORES is needlessly remaking (I’m not saying Let Me In is bad OR good, as I have not seen it {I am saying Hollywood needlessly remakes and regurgitates things ad nauseum [cue Eddie Izzard's comedy bit about any British film that does a hefty bit of business in America is bought up by Hollywood, the budget is upped by many millions of dollars, and now space monkeys have been added into the third act ⟨have I surpassed Gabe's inception levels yet?âź©}])

      So, yeah. Let The Right One In blew me away. What a good film. I have no desire to see Let Me In, as I cannot fathom the idea that it will in some way usurp the original film.

      • I saw Let Me In last weekend. I’m also a big, BIG fan of the original, and since this remake was filmed in my home state I was curious about it. It is VERY good. A great adaptation. Not better than the original, because it’s the ORIGINAL… but still an excellent remake of both the book and the movie.

        Also….. you’re fucking in here all the time! All the time you’re in here with the fucking matches! In here with the fucking matches! You’re fucking doing and fucking [clucking noise]

        (I could quote that entire performance.)

        • In the span of about three weeks I saw “Let the Right One In,” read the book and then saw “Let Me In.” Of the three, the book is the weakest, I think. The movies both hit on the right amount of ambiguity that the novel fills in. Between the movies, I like the original better, but I think that the remake has many things to recommend it (in particular, some really good acting).

          What I’m saying is that My Life Is Let the Right One In.

        • Yeah, I think I was being overly dramatic when I said I had NO desire to see Let Me In. I still would like to check it out. It’s just that the thrill of Let The Right One In is still fresh in my brain, so i think I’ll need some time to absorb it before I go into the remake.

          I’m glad it’s getting good marks. I don’t want any movie to fail. I’d like them all too be good, even if they’re shot-to-shot remakes or completely deviate from the source material.

  10. I used to serve coffee to stock brokers in San Francisco, and yes, they are without a doubt assholes.

    Oh, and why hasn’t Rollerball been added to the Hunt yet? I’d like nominate it, please.

  11. the only reason jaden smith knows poor people exist is because he made this movie.

  12. Nothing But Trouble? I still have nightmares. Be careful, Gabe.

    • I know that THFTWMOAT is meant to be some sort of quixotic quest…but I think Nothing But Trouble may actually win the darn thing.

      “What does ‘High Score’ mean? ‘New High Score’ — is that bad? What’s that mean? Did I break it?”

  13. Thanks you Hollywood for reminded me, as a black female, that being black is ALWAYS hard.

  14. Can someone make a gif of the kid from Scrooged who doesn’t talk but we find out how smart he is because he solves a “put all the balls in the holes” puzzle by spinning it? Please and thank you in advance.

  15. I’d like to nominate Cool World starring Kim Basinger & Brad Pitt. I walked out of the movie when I was tween and I watched tons of horrible movies as tween so it must have been bad.

  16. More like The Pursuit of Sappyness, amiright?

    • Pursuit of Crappyness? Sorry, too easy. (but sorry though)

    • If you think The Pursuit of Happyness is bad, then you should definitely see Seven Pounds*. MUCH more WMOAT-morthy.

      *No one should definitely see Seven Pounds. It was BY FAR the worst film I saw in 2008.

      • Yeah, I’m kind of surprised that didn’t get the WMOAT nod in the Will Smith category. I haven’t seen it (I listen to peoples’ opinions!), but literally every single person I know who has seen it says it is in the top 3 worst movies they’ve ever seen. Like just insufferably awful, apparently.

      • I was trapped on an airplane once with Seven Pounds as the in-flight movie. I was wishing for a parachute by 15 minutes in. I second the nomination.

  17. I actually liked this movie, Jaden was so cute, and he and Will were so sweet together
    Yes getting a job for solving a rubik’s cube is very dumb but overall awwwww

    • I cried a LOT when I saw this movie, but I was angry after, like it hadn’t been my choice.

    • I actually liked this movie too, although I would never watch it more than once. At one point my husband and I looked at each other like “how much longer is life going to kick the shit out of this guy?” The subway bathroom scene made me cry buckets.

    • I had jury duty last winter, and they showed this movie in the lounge where you sat around to wait to not get called, and I cried in public. Like, WEPT. It was embarassing. I hate this movie.

  18. As an actual living, breathing former poor person (yay, middle class! Yay “Making it Out” [all rights reserved]), I would like to nominate this guy as our spokesperson:

  19. I’d like to nominate The Sweetest Thing, which aspired to be American Pie for women.

    Also, this is real and is happening:

  20. Always Be solving rubik’s Cubes!

    • For real, though. This is at least the second time Will Smith has impressed someone to a ridiculous extent with his ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube. On Fresh Prince he got offered a spot at Stanford because of that shit!

  21. I heard from someone who knows the real Chris Gardner that he is a complete self-righteous ASSHOLE.

    Jus’ sayin’

  22. In abject poverty born and raised
    On the scenic roof is where I spent most of my days.
    I had to tell my kid that he’d never be a star,
    But a guy like me–I knew I’d go far.

    When a stockbroker guy, prolly up to no good,
    Started tryin’ to park in my neighborhood.
    I saw his phat ride and decided right there,
    “I’m competing for that internship, to get to Bel Air.”

    I whistled for a cab, and when it came near,
    I saw it was the guy who could make my career.
    If anything I could have shown real credentials,
    But instead I solved a puzzle and drove the guy mental.”

    I jogged–how many times, about seven or eight?
    and I yelled to my ‘hood, “Yo, peeps, smell ya later!”
    Looked at my kingdom, I was finally rich,
    To sit on my throne as the Happyest Bitch.

  23. These guys know a little something about pulling bootstraps and etc.:

  24. I refused to see this movie because of the misspelled title. That’s all it took.

  25. All of this happens in one Kid Cudi song? Shiiiit.

  26. “But now his life leaves him.” That is some weird bloggage writing you got going on there, brohams

    • As virtuous men pass mildly away,
      And whisper to their souls to go,
      Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
      “Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

      (Maybe he’s just a literary genius. You don’t know.)

  27. FACTORY GIRL. MAKE IT HAPPEN.

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  29. I would like to nominate the following:
    It’s a Wonderful Life
    Casablanca
    A Fistful of Dollars
    The Shawshank Redemption
    The Princess Bride

    Visit my website! Gunningfordownvotes dot com

  30. I actually liked that basketball scene in the beginning. As the movie progressed, laying the depressing circumstances of Gardner’s pursuit of stockbrokeryness on thicker and thicker, I liked it less and less. I liked that early scene because it felt kind of real. Like, when he said that to his son, he meant it. Then he realized he was putting his own bad frame of mind on his son and was ashamed, so aggressively righted it.

  31. I nominate the Killer Inside Me. Wow was that a stupid piece of shit

    • Holy crap r u right! You would think that the idea of Casey Affleck beating Jessica Alba and Kate Hudsen to a bloody pulp would be at least a little appealing, but it’s really just awful and gross and snuff film-esque. Really a shame considering the book is amazing. (pushes up glasses)

      • Okay I beg to differ. Everyone’s all like “ooohhh the beating those girls to death scenes were ssoooo disturbing.” No. Those scenes weren’t actually all THAT bad. Those scenes were kind of funny in a bad movie that is trying too hard to be serious sort of funny. The Cohen brothers could have made this work, particularly the scene where Casey Affleck slips in the dead girl’s pee puddle. The movie is bad because it is very flat and boring and improbable, especially the end (no spoilo) with the goofy music and the fire. So dumb.

  32. I saw this once a while ago, and the only part I remember is when Will and Jaden are in the subway bathroom. Let me paint the scene:

    Jaden was sleeping innocenty, draped across Will’s lap. Meanwhile, Will was silently weeping, barricading the door with his foot as Jared tried to bust the door down, drunkenly shouting bad-pun-threats like “HAVE A TASTE OF MY $5+TAX FOOTLONG” and “THERE’S A PARTY IN MY XXXL PANTS AND YOU’RE INVITED AND IT’S MANDATORY”.

    I cried.

    • I know, I know, that was an easy joke. More like a run-on sentence than a joke, really. But I’m burnt out from an all-nighter and it seemed like a good comment at the time. Downvote away!

  33. I was gonna try to make a joke about Will Smith….90′s rap music…parents just don’t understand…et cetera et cetera…but here’s a link to the video instead, because I feel like it just needs to be brought up every time that Will Smith is mentioned:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW3PFC86UNI&ob=av3e

  34. i’d like to nominate:

    he’s just not that into you

    seriously – i kept catching it on hbo and watching a couple minutes here and there and was so drawn in by how completely terrible it was i ended up watching most of it i think, and yep – just as i suspected, it was INSANELY TERRIBLE. you should watch it. and i’m sorry.

    • That movie makes Carl Palladino look like a member of a gay-straight alliance ugh, every gay character in that movie pretty much just says “mmmmmhhhhhhhmmmmm” and “you go their girlfriend”

    • You are so right–that movie is awful. I saved it up to watch when my husband was out of town, and it was such a wasted night. I’m still pissed about the $7 on my cable bill.

      It didn’t used to be that way. Romantic comedies, however insufferable, were at least inoffensive. You could rent any of them and feel safe that you were getting the marshmallows of movie-going; no nutrition, but fun and sweet. Now it’s like Hostel but with more kissing. Gross.

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  36. I will keep nominating Valentine’s Day.

    “Valentine’s Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it’s more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do NOT date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.” – Roger Ebert

  37. I liked this typo: “But now his life leaves him.”

  38. I have always refused to see this film on the same grounds that I refuse to see Spanglish.

    • I saw Spanglish and it was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. Tea Leoni is pretty ridiculous, Sandler does pretty well, Leachman’s cute as an old drunk lady,and PAZ VEGA? HELLO? Rrrowwwrrrr.

  39. Is it just me or does anyone else get really stressed out when watching movies where the main character keeps getting screwed over by a simple misunderstanding or some person stealing their shit? I had to turn this movie off halfway through coz it stressed me out so much how they had to keep running everywhere slash how everyone kept stealing his shit. It’s also the reason why I had to turn off that movie ‘the ex’ coz Zach Braff kept getting screwed by Jason Bateman and that lamp.

    • yes– i think of these painfully unfunny situations as ‘irritainment’– someone somewhere thinks of them as comedic or suspenseful, while i just cringe and hit FF to get past the predictable shitstorm outcome.

  40. Here you go, Gabe. Good luck, and godspeed, you black emperor.

  41. I would like to nominate:
    failure to launch starring Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew McConaughey
    and
    My best friend’s girl starring Kate Hudson & Dane Cook

  42. Jumper with Hayden Christensen and Rachel BIlson

  43. I’m glad someone else recognized what a turd of a movie this film is. People are really offended when you tell this movie sucks ass.

  44. Has Donnie Darko been nominated? If not, I’m nominating it.

    And that could be a contender for the Worst Genre, as well: Movies Favored by Me When I Was 19. See: Garden State, The Matrix, and so on and so forth.


  45. Sweet November.

    • *please make it happen, I mean.
      THIS movie (Happyness) made my dad cry when he and my brother were on some father-son movie date. So it sounds as much as uncomfortable as I expected…

    • Please do this film, it sucked beyond belief. Oh you carefree people with the terminal illness. You could do a two-fer with that crapfest with Winona Ryder and Richard Gere “Autumn in New York”, Ugh.

  46. I must nominate “The Last Airbender” for the WMOAT, and I know what people are going to say, “M. Night movies are so easy to hate”. Well dear friends, allow me to paint a picture for you with my imagination brush…..

    I consider it M. Night’s brief exodus from a world he’s created and perpetually lurks in. A world of retarded twisting sub-par wanna be horror and suspense movies. M. Night leaps forth from the tentacled black swirling void of frustration, annoyance, despair, and depravity to grab the closest possible thing outside his world, and pull it kicking and screaming back in, purely to satiate his hunger to cause ill will. Unfortunetaly, the hapless victim was a surprisingly enjoyable animated series of which once pulled into a nether of hopelessness and enveloping blackness. Once there, cold, blind, and alone, the poor victim was violated, maimed, tortured, corrupted, twisted, and finally put on display for the world to see the terrible power and hunger to suck the good out of anything this man touches. And after he gotten his fill, he remains in his realm of shitty suspense movies, only to eventually grow bored and hungry again, perhaps this time, for something you enjoy.

  47. I don’t understand how this film got nominated over Seven Pounds which is an unrelenting downer. Also, Seven Pounds is obviously Will Smith’s bid for an Oscar. I did enjoy this film but have to admit on reflection that I’ve never seen it all the way through. I’ve only ever seen it on cable so I didn’t pay any money. I generally start to watch it and then somehow miss the middle to come back for the ending. When I originally saw the title, it annoyed me that they spelled happiness wrong, and the explanation that was given still didn’t make me happy.

    I can’t wait for Brides Wars another piece of crap-film making I watched on HBO. I resent the idea this garbage film propagating the idea that supposedly a wedding is what all women think and plan for their whole life, that a wedding is the biggest thing ever. I have told my family repeatedly that if I did get married, that I would be eloping and would want the gift money to buy equipment.

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