Old fashioned values

The Pursuit of Happyness is a vintage Hollywood tale of achieving the American dream through hard work, while vintage director Robert Altman's last movie has many of his trademark quirks, but is ultimately dull and meandering. By Declan Burke

It's enshrined in the American constitution but the pursuit of happiness is a nebulous aspiration: one man's happiness might well be another man's living hell. For Chris Gardner (Will Smith), a struggling medical supplies salesman in 1981, the cut-throat world of stock trading seemed something of a paradise. Despite having a wife and young son to support, Gardner decided to apply for an unpaid internship at the Dean Witter firm of stockbrokers as the price to be paid for entering the promised land, if only he could land the single position available to the highest-ranking graduate in his class.

A tearjerking tribute to Reaganomics, The Pursuit of Happyness (12A) is vintage Hollywood material, albeit the kind of movie that hasn't enjoyed much popularity since Reagan's heyday. Smith, unusually subdued and hugely effective as a result, plays a role Jimmy Stewart could have played with ease. Focusing on Gardner's personal struggle to succeed against overwhelming odds, particularly after his wife's departure leaves him as sole custodian of his son, it's a lesson in how the American dream is available to anyone regardless of creed, class or colour, provided they're prepared to haul hard enough on their bootstraps.

The movie is also an object lesson in how far screenwriters are prepared to stretch the facts upon which true stories are based. The emotional fulcrum of the tale is the relationship between Gardner and his five-year-old son (played, in an impressively assured debut, by Will Smith's real-life son, Jaden); without this relationship, the movie might just as well have been called The Pursuit of Moneyness. In reality, however, Gardner was unaware of the whereabouts of his two-year-old son for most of the internship; he was paid during his training course; and most of his class of fellow interns graduated and were accepted by Dean Witter as employees.
None of the above, of course, should detract from the quality of the story depicted in the movie, which is for the most part intelligently told and invested with less sentiment than you might expect by director Gabriele Muccino and scriptwriter Steve Conrad, who adapts Gardner's own version of events from his bestselling autobiography.

The late, lamented Robert Altman's swansong, A Prairie Home Companion (PG), is a typically multi-strand tale, in this case of on-stage and behind-the-scenes shenanigans on the last night of a beloved country-and-western live radio broadcast. Beautifully made, starring Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Kline and Tommy Lee Jones, and containing the usual quota of Altman's quixotic trademarks, the movie is a celebration of the salt-of-the-earth good ol' folks of the American Midwest.

Despite the mega-wattage star power and cinematic flair, however, A Prairie Home Companion is a fitfully interesting, meandering exercise in nostalgia. That may well have been Altman's intention, but while the movie is entirely worthy, and notable for author Garrison Keillor's assured performance as the radio show MC, it's excruciatingly dull. A different type of American dream, then, and one likely to appeal only to Altman completists and insomnia sufferers.

The Pursuit of Happyness ***

A Prairie Home Companion **