Chris and the filmmakers seem happy to see her go, but life only gets tougher once she and her paychecks disappear. Much of the film involves Chris' subsequent efforts to keep himself and his child housed and fed while he is enrolled in an unpaid internship program at a powerful stock brokerage firm. Bright and ferociously determined, Chris easily slides into this fantastical world of shouting men, ringing phones and benevolent bosses. He goes along to get along, and when one of his bosses asks for money to pay for a cab, he quickly opens his wallet. Chris himself stiffs another working man for some money because that wallet is so light. But this is a film about him, not the other guy.
How you respond to this man's moving story may depend on whether you find Smith and his son's performances so overwhelmingly winning that you buy the idea that poverty is a function of bad luck and bad choices, and success the result of heroic toil and dreams. Both performances are certainly likable in the extreme, though Smith shined brighter and was given much more to do when he played the title character in Michael Mann's underrated Ali.
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