7. Will Smith The Pursuit of Happyness (1998)
Will Smith is fairly inoffensive. Hes one of those toe-the-line kind of actors, whos never so bad that I have to resist the urge to throw my drink at the screen, but never so good that I have to resist the urge to dry-hump it either. When you sit down to A Mr. I-Make-This-Look-Good vehicle, you can usually tell pretty much exactly what youre going to get. So when I sat down to Pursuit of Happyness, I was fairly ambivalent toward the outcome. However, pretty soon in, I could tell that this was a special one for Smith; that he really believed in what he was performing. Sure, you can attribute that to a solid script by Steve Conrad; or quietly confident direction from Gabriele Muccino; but in all honesty, one of things that sold the films questionable theme of being rich solves all your problems was Will Smiths unexpectedly moving turns as the down-on-his-luck Chris Gardener. Smiths performance his so good here in fact, particularly his on-screen chemistry with his real-life son Jaden Smith, that Im actually convinced that without him, the whole cash = happiness moral would have been much more difficult to swallow. So well done Will Smith for making me, a hopelessly far-gone cynic, actually buy the tat that you were selling.