英文电影影评---当幸福来敲门.doc

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1、The Pursuit of Happiness当幸福来敲门2006With a title like The Pursuit of Happiness, you expect the characters to get to the promised land. They do, but if the journey matters more than the destination, this is a movie to skip. The Pursuit of Happyness is long, dull, and depressing. It expands into two hou

2、rs a story that could have been told more effectively in one. This is not the feel-good movie of the season unless you believe that a few moments of good cheer can redeem 110 minutes of gloom. Sitting through The Pursuit of Happiness is a chore. Downbeat movies arent inherently bad (in fact, many ar

3、e powerful), but this one provides artificial characters in contrived circumstances. How is it that movies inspired by a real story often feel more fake than those fully embedded in the realm of fiction?Will Smith has generated Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Chris Gardner, the real-life guy whose r

4、ags-to-riches story forms the basis of the movie. (Impoverished guy becomes capitalist poster boy.) While its fair to say that this is one of the best straight performances of Smiths career, it didnt blow me away. In and of itself, the acting, while effective, is not Best Actor material, but it woul

5、dnt surprise me if the movies prestige factor and Smiths popularity earn him a nod. Meanwhile, his female co-star, Thandie Newton, isnt going to be considered for any award. Newton spends about 90% of her screen time doing an impersonation of a harpy: screeching, bitching, and contorting her face in

6、to unpleasant expressions. Smiths son, Jaden, is okay as the movies child protagonist; its unclear whether his occasional deficiencies are the result of his acting, Steven Conrads writing, or Gabriele Muccinos direction, but theres not much personality behind the cute features and curly hair.Chris G

7、ardner (Will Smith) is down on his luck. Its 1981 San Francisco and his self-employed business of selling portable bone density scanners isnt doing well. His wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), does nothing but yell at him and give him a cold shoulder, and the lack of domestic harmony is impacting the dis

8、position of his beloved son, Christopher (Jaden Christopher Syre Smith). Thats when Chris life turns into a country song. His wife leaves. He is evicted from his home. He goes to jail, neither passing GO nor collecting a much-needed $200. He gets hit by a car. He is robbed. He makes his son cry. He

9、alienates a friend over $14. He gets to spend a night in the cleanest public restroom in the history of public restrooms. But theres a bright spot, although you need a dark-adapted eye to find it. Despite having no experience, Chris applies to enter an internship program at Dean Witter. He would app

10、ear to have no chance to get in until he amazes the head of the program (Brian Howe) by solving the Rubiks Cube puzzle in the back of a taxi cab.Its a blessing that the movie doesnt use a stock villain to impede Chris herky-jerky trip to the top, because that would have tipped the movie into the emp

11、ire of the unwatchable. However, the lack of a strong conflict makes the two-hour running length seem very long. Thankfully, theres also not much in the way of overt melodrama, but that could be a byproduct of having characters who are not deeply realized and have narrow emotional ranges. Its tough

12、to connect with Chris and his son. Although they are played by a real-life father and son, theres no chemistry between them. Were constantly told how desperately Chris loves Christopher, but it takes a long time before we begin to buy it. Most of the time, Christopher seems like an annoying piece of

13、 baggage that Chris drops off at daycare when he has other things to do.The films most compelling scenes are those that show Chris struggling to enter the rat race. Granted, this is no Glengarry Glen Ross, but it shows the pressure these salesmen are under and how important the contact lists are. In

14、 the overall scheme of things, however, these sequences are background noise. They are neither plentiful nor lengthy. The movie spends more time following Chris on his futile sales rounds for the bone density scanner than it does accompanying him during his broker training.The moral of the story is

15、as trite as they come: dont let anyone convince you to give up on your dreams. Disney animated films have been doing this better for decades. The Pursuit of Happyness concludes with a caption that tells us what happens to Chris after the end of the movie; it promises a better story than the one we h

16、ave just watched. The film is also marred by a persistent (although not verbose) voiceover that adds nothing to the story while frequently jerking us out of the experience of watching it. I dont need Will Smith telling me: This part of the story is called riding the bus.This is the English-language

17、debut of Gabriele Muccino, who has made a name for himself in Italian cinema. The Pursuit of Happiness has the kind of slow, drab tone one occasionally associates with a director raised outside of the Hollywood system. What can be an asset in some circumstances is a detriment in this one. The Pursui

18、t of Happiness isnt enjoyable, and its meager pleasures, including the eventual payoff, arent enough to justify the unrelenting misery. The Pursuit of Happiness is competently made and gets lots of the details right, but when it comes to the emotional core of the story, it loses the pursuit and miss

19、es the happiness.No.2 The Pursuit of Happiness当幸福来敲门2006Will Smith plays a San Francisco medical equipment salesman who resolves to change his life and become a stockbroker, but is made homeless in the processThe sort of film the Oscars are designed for, The Pursuit Of Happiness should induce nausea

20、. Theres the cheesy dialogue (You want something, go get it - period!). Theres the annoying title, with its deliberate misspelling (a reference to a slogan seen on a wall that becomes the films mantra). And theres the father and son acting combo of Will Smith and seven-year-old Jaden, who between th

21、em serve unapologetically as an advert for the American dream. Yet thanks to Italian director Gabriele Muccino, in his first Hollywood outing, the film holds firm. Set in San Francisco in 1981, at a time when the Rubiks Cube is sweeping the nation, the film is inspired by the real-life story of one

22、Chris Gardner (Smith). A struggling Bay Area salesman, Gardners product is a portable bone density scanner, a box of tricks which he believes doctors will soon be clamouring for. But luck deserts Gardner alongside his wife Linda (Newton) and a hippie girl steals one of his scanners. Left with custod

23、y of his five-year-old son Christopher (Smith), Gardner is desperate to be a good father, as he didnt know his own Dad until he was 28. A chance encounter with a stockbroker inspires Gardner to change career and secure an internship at a brokerage. Remarkably, he manages to get onto the six-month co

24、urse, but its a gamble. There was no salary, he says. Not even a reasonable promise of a job. Forced to sell his remaining machines on the weekends, he and Christopher live on the poverty line, and are evicted after Gardner is hit with a crippling tax bill. Looked at cynically, the film boasts one o

25、f those heavyweight performances that Hollywood A-list stars occasionally offer in a quest for cachet. In this case Smith lets his hair go grey to convince us that this is no vanity project. But bonding convincingly (as you might expect) with his own son on screen, Smith delivers his most compelling

26、 performance since Ali in 2001. Playing Gardner as a decent, honest man who refuses to let life grind him down, its an inspirational turn. With Muccino (best known for 2001s LUltimo Bacio, which was remade in the US in 2005 as The Last Kiss) in charge, Smiths acting is shorn of the usual high-energy

27、 tics that have blighted his work. So enchanting is the performance that it overshadows the films more problematic and manipulative moments, notably the contention that capitalism holds the key to happiness. But this is Will Smith doing Kramer Vs. Kramer and the film never allows us to contemplate its dubious nature for too long.VerdictBetween Muccinos sensitive direction and Smith and sons expertly calibrated performances, The Pursuit Of Happiness manages to win you over with a flurry of feel good emotions.