Set in the early 1980’s, Chris Gardner and his wife invest their life savings into bone density scanners, which he has a hard time selling because they are only slightly better than x-rays and more expensive. Due to their money troubles, his wife works two shifts to pay the bills. She soon becomes fed up and leaves him. Chris demands to keep his son (played by Will Smith’s real son) since he never wanted him to grow up without a father.
Chris meets a man driving a fancy red car and learns that he works for the investment company Dean Witter. The Dean Witter man is not interested in Chris since he is only a high school graduate, until Chris solves the a rubik’s cube (new back then) during a cab ride. Dean Witter gives Chris a shot as an intern which pays nothing against twenty other people.
Anything that could go wrong did! Chris and his son get evicted from their apartment and move into a motel. He can only work six hours a day while the other interns worked nine, plus his boss keeps asking him to get coffee and doughnuts, so he falls behind. Two scanners are stolen. He sells a scanner, but the bank takes most of his money from his account for unpaid taxes. They get evicted from the motel and have to live in a homeless shelter. Finally, they fail to make it to the homeless shelter on time and have to sleep in a bus terminal bathroom overnight.
In the end, Chris recovers the stolen scanners, passes the investment test and ends up earning the most money because he switched to targeting the top executives of a company to invest with him. Dean Witter offers him a broker position and in 1987 opened his own firm. He continues to this day to teach people to never give up!
My Thoughts:
To me, the best scene of the movie is when Chris and his son are playing basketball and Chris tells him to give up. His son becomes dejected and puts his ball away. Chris realizes his mistake and tells his son, “Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something. Not even me. Alright? You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves they want to tell you you can’t do it. You want something go get it. Period.”
Unfortunately, everyone has an opinion of how you “should” live your life. You should do it their way or the way everyone else does. The funny thing is that in their next breadth they will tell you that the greatest people – like Steve Jobs, Oprah, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Theresa – did it their own way. So I say, follow the examples of greatest instead of those of mediocrity and remember, never give up! Anyway, good luck and God bless you in everything you do!