Will Smith is one of the biggest movie stars of the last 30 years, which is one of the reasons he’s never been particularly good at playing normal people.
As a secret government agent saving the world from a giant alien cockroach, he was so believable that even Tommy Lee Jones took him seriously.
As Muhammad Ali, he made embodying the Greatest seem like a lateral move.
As a homeless medical device salesman in 1981 San Francisco, or, uh, whoever the hell he was supposed to be in “Seven Pounds,” it felt like Smith couldn’t stop himself from veering into a kind of doleful civilian drag, as if the only alternative he could imagine to being on top of the world was being at the bottom of it.That’s reason enough to be nervous about the idea of Smith playing Richard Williams — outspoken father of Venus and Serena — in
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