The Pursuit of Happyness
May 2007 Reviewed by: Doug Blackburn Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

This is a story of triumph over adversity and of breaking cycles of failure. My only criticism is that the movie stops when the central character, Chris Gardner (Will Smith), finally wins in his struggle for success. Instead we are left with a little bit of text telling us only that Chris Gardner moved on from Dean Witter to start his own company and sell it in a multi-million-dollar transaction. There was a lot more story after the initial success that would have made the struggle to get there all the more sweet. But it is a movie hard to fault in telling an interesting story about one man’s struggle after losing everything to get out from under years of poverty and then turning that around to ultimate success. The additional subtext, humor, and vignettes keep the story moving along briskly.

Image quality is good, certainly off the chart compared to DVD. Because I was living in San Francisco during the time period of this movie, I was nostalgic for places I’ve seen many times looking so great on the big screen. Although it falls short of reference quality, the image quality serves the movie exceptionally well. It helps tell the story in all its gritty reality, sparing or softening no detail. Colors are right on the money, not too saturated, neither too cold nor too warm.

The soundtrack is also quite good, but the story isn’t the type that exercises a surround system like a blockbuster movie does. That said, the sound of BART trains, Chinatown, buses, and other ambient sounds of San Francisco were perfect, just as I experienced them years ago. So while the soundtrack succeeds on being faithful to the actual surroundings, it’s certainly not the sort you’d put on to demo your new surround system. This disc has an uncompressed LPCM 5.1 soundtrack, and its clarity is really excellent. Surround channels are used almost exclusively for ambient sounds. There’s not a lot of activity in the LFE channel, but again, this isn’t a sonic spectacular sort of movie. Center channel dialogue is well recorded and easy to follow.

The extras are all worth watching: a short feature about Will Smith and his son; a music video; the Italian director’s take on telling a quintessentially American tale of success over adversity; a making-of feature; an interview with the subject of the movie, Chris Gardner; a feature on Rubik’s Cube; and director’s commentary. Many of the extras are in high-def.

It’s all good: message, story, acting, sound, image quality. What more can you ask?

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