Susan Hated Literature

Dir: Gabriele Muccino
Writ: Steve Conrad

• Will Smith - Chris Gardner
• Jaden Smith - Christopher
• Thandie Newton - Linda

At the start of the film Linda is pulling double shifts while Chris is out selling bone density machines, struggling to make ends meet and support their young son Christopher. Things are not going well, the bone density machine isn’t selling as well as Chris had hoped and he had invested all his money in it. They are behind on the rent and nothing seems to be going their way. Their marriage too is under pressure and when Linda gets the offer of a job in New York she takes it, leaving Christopher behind with his father.

Chris, inspired to become a stoke-broker because he saw a shiny car, applies for an internship, and gets it, only to discover that it is unpaid.

He can’t pay the rent and is forced from his apartment to a motel, but can’t afford that and ends up spending the night in a train station, all the time trying to take care of his son. They move from homeless shelter to shelter, all the while Chris is trying to be the best intern at the stockbrokers, to be the one they offer a job to, all in the pursuit of happiness.

Acting-wise this is a good film. Will Smith has shown that he can handle more serious characters and is entirely believeable here. His son, Jaden plays his on scren son and is really fantastic. But I just couldn’t get behind the central messge of this film, which seemed to me to be “aim as high as you can, because if you try hard enough you will succeed and it will all be worth it”.

I don’t buy that.

What if there had been another intern in a similar position to our hero? One of them would have come away with nothing, and ended up on the streets, pursuing happiness is all well and good, but you have to deal in reality. We are constantly shown there happy ever after success stories, but what about all those people who go after this great prize only to fail? We don’t get to see their stories, yet surely their warnings are just as important as the rarer winners?

And then there is Chris’s message to his son, never let anyone tell you what you can’t do, never accept limits but find out what you want and go for it, don’t let anything stop you achieving it. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t do something.
Am I the only one a little disturbed by how selfish and stupid that message is?

IMDb | Blogcritics | Pajiba -Scathing reviews for bitchy people | Alas, A blog

Tags: 4 Stars, capitalism, film with a message, Gabriele Muccino, hope, Jaden Smith, meh, poverty, selfish, Steve Conrad, stupid, Thandie Newton, The Persuit of Happyness, Will Smith

Related posts

• The Happening (7)
• Fantastic Four (1)
• Tristan & Isolde (4)
• This is a very good conversation (7)
• The Tooth Fairy (2)

Dir & Writ: David Twohy
Writ: Jim Wheat & Ken Wheat

• Vin Diesel - Riddick
• Colm Feore - Lord Marshal
• Thandie Newton - Dame Vaako
• Judi Dench - Aereon
• Karl Urban - Vaako
• Alexa Davalos - Kyra

I’m a big fan of Pitch Black, that low budget horror in space. And I used to be a big fan of Vin Diesel’s but recent film-roles have made me all a bit meh. Still, I’m surprised it took me this long to get around to watching this film, but I finally caved and got the dvd last week. And I’m not too disapointed that I waited so long, because to be honest this film is trying so hard to be something that it isn’t.

I’m not sure why they bothered to keep the name of Riddick, marketing I suppose. Because this film is totally unrelated to the original. The universe we are shown in Chronicles is totally unlike that of Pitch Black, and the characters are also pretty unrecognisable, those few who actually survived the first film.

But lets ignore all that and try to treat Chronicles as though it were a standalone film, with no history.

It is a sci-fi film, one of those with the clichéd army of evil. Here in the form of Necromongers, an army who are trying to convert or kill all the planets of the universe in order to reach their promised land, the Under-verse. It tries to get out of the stereotype by having this evil army do battle, not with good, but with a “different sort of evil”. Trouble is it doesn’t really work, because in this film Riddick isn’t really all that evil. Sure he kills people but what action hero doesn’t? And everyone he kills here was actually trying to kill him first. Fair enough I suppose, maybe the ending of PB really did change him.

Overall this is a question of style over substance. Style over story. And style over characters.

And yes, it all looks great. In a “look at all our cool spaceships”. And they try and make this intricate back story about the Necromongers and the Furyans (I don’t really care how it should be spelled), and invents this reason why Riddick is so great at killing. But it just doesn’t work for me. None of the characters have even half the presence of those in PB. I did quite enjoy Karl Urban’s Vaako, but not enough to make up for the rest of the film’s shortcomings.

It is an average enough film. Nothing spectacularly bad about it, but nothing great either. Though I’ve heard that the director’s cut makes it a better film overall. I can’t say, I watched the theatrical cut.

Tags: 6 Stars, Alexa Davalos, average, Chronicles of Riddick, clichéd, Colm Feore, David Twohy, Jim Wheat, Judi Dench, Karl Urban, Ken Wheat, Riddick, sequel, sff, style over substance, stylish, Thandie Newton, Vin Diesel

Related posts

• Underworld: Evolution (5)
• Angel-A (4)
• Winter Rose (4)
• The Lake House (9)
• The Gunslinger (7)