"The Pursuit of Happyness" certainly is a decent, well-intended film about a father's responsibility to his son and his struggles with homelessness. It features a sensitive performance by Will Smith as a character, based on a real man, who overcame staggering obstacles to claim his stake of the American dream. Were this an indie film with a gritty edge and a fresh take on being down-and-out in the richest country in the world, "Pursuit" would stand a good chance of winning an award at next month's Sundance Film Festival.

Instead, this is a slick studio production with a huge movie star and top professionals occupying every production role so that the polish of this well-made film makes even homelessness look neat and tidy. Then inserting nonsensical chases and suspense sequences into the story betrays its Hollywood heritage.

Smith's performance will win accolades from critics, and Sony certainly can sell this as a feel-good holiday film. So "Pursuit" may well claim boxoffice happiness. A lot depends on Smith's marquee clout.

The story takes place in early 1980s San Francisco, when the trickle-down economic theory was all the rage. Smith's Chris Gardner is running hard just to keep in place. An investment in a bone-scanning machine, which he then discovers the medical profession isn't terribly interested in buying from him, has left his family nearly broke. The Gardners are two months behind on rent, the car has been towed for unpaid parking tickets, and the IRS wants back taxes. His bitter, frustrated wife Linda (Thandie Newton in a thankless role) must work double shifts to pay bills.

In a sequence that begs for more explanation, Linda quits the family and moves to New York in search of a job, leaving her 5-year-old son with his penniless dad. It's safe to say Linda is not bucking for Mother of the Year. Through guile and determination, Chris lands an internship with a stock brokerage firm. But he will receive no pay until he lands a broker's job for which he must compete with 20-odd fellow interns.

Within a week, he and his son Christopher (Smith's real-life son Jaden Christopher Syre Smith) get evicted. They move to a motel as Smith continues to sell his stockpile of bone scanners. But the IRS attaches his bank account, so the two find themselves on the street, sleeping in shelters, subway cars and, for one night, a public toilet.

Screenwriter Steven Conrad and director Gabriele Muccino do a fine job of moving between two worlds that scarcely recognize each other -- the street where risk, loss and gain are matters of survival and Wall Street where those same possibilities drive the Darwinian competition. At times the film wants to manufacture melodrama, such as chases after people who steal Chris' bone scanner or his parking a partner's car when he has only minutes to land a major account. They feel like intrusions in the real story.

Muccino is an Italian director ("The Last Kiss") making his English-language debut, but you look in vain for evidence of a fresh eye on American society. The period details in J. Michael Riva's production design are solid, but any number of fair-to-middling Hollywood directors could have made this film. Phedon Papamichael's cinematography is refreshingly straightforward, but Andrea Guerra's music edges into sentimentality.