Big Willy Time

Yesterday, I was sitting around my little apartment, procrastinating on doing anything productive, when I decided to turn on a movie instead of writing a paper. As I was parousing through my movie collection, I stumbled accross both “I Am Legend” and “7 Pounds”, which are both serious, good, modern Will Smith movies. Now the 2010 Will Smith is known as a serious, top notch actor, who demands respect (and a big pay check). Even though I didn’t watch either of theses movies (I ended up watching all of season 2 of “Arrested Development” great show btw), it did get me thinking about Will Smith over the years. My first memories of Mr. Smith are from around the year 1995 or so, I was 7 and he was the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He did a great job on the show as a goofy kid from Philly living in an upper class home in well, Bel-Air. My next memories of Will are of him in “Independence Day”, where he played Captain Steven Hiller, who as IMDB.com so eloquently puts it is “a Marine pilot, he’s going to save the world from aliens. He has a girlfriend named Jasmine.” A little more serious of a role, but still had much of the good ol’ Fresh Prince Vibe to it. The most recent Will Smith movie I’ve seen was “The Pursuit of Happiness”, where he plays a broke, unemployed man, who’s lady left him, he has a son, and his only form of a job is an unpaid internship at a stock brokerage, and selling fancy, unnecessary portable, little bit better than x-ray machines to doctors, who don’t really want them. It’s a very serious drama, and it’s really good (in my humble opinion).

When looking at his career as a whole, it’s kind of crazy how much he has changed over the years, going from the goofy, women respecting rapper from Philly, to one of the most serious drama actors on the planet. So I say to Will Smith, great job on staying with the times as they’ve changed, and not being like Ernest, who went to camp, and never got over that role, and ended up fading off into the sands of time. Or Bruce Willis and his unwillingness to change as he gets old (while I love John McClane, he’s going to be in a walker soon for heavens sake). (For my uneducated readers out there(Lexi(little sister)), that was his character in the Die Hard movies)(parentheses party). ok, go. The Fresh Prince wouldn’t work with a 40 year old man as the actor in 2010. So let’s all raise our glasses to Will Smith, for being the ever changing enigma of great acting. (Maybe someday you can take Morgan Freeman’s position)

A Votre Sonte!