Summary

The Pursuit of Happyness , Men In Black and others make Smith’s personal Mount Rushmore of his own movies.
Smith had fun making Aladdin and Bad Boys but doesn’t add them to his top four.
Despite controversy, Smith’s career highlights include an Oscar win and successful film roles.

With Bad Boys: Ride or Die set to hit theaters, Will Smith names the four movies that best define his career. He’s been a sitcom star and a rapper, and he’s headed up some of the most iconic Hollywood movies of recent decades, including blockbusters like Independence Day and Men in Black. In 2022, Smith achieved a new artistic height when he won the Best Actor Oscar for King Richard – a moment that was marred by The Slap. Still trying to bounce back from that controversy, Smith is back in theaters with the sequel Bad Boys: Ride or Die.

With a Hollywood resume spanning decades and including huge hits as well as critically-acclaimed films, Smith was recently asked to name his own personal Mount Rushmore of his own movies, and picked out a quartet of interesting titles: The Pursuit of Happyness, Men in Black, I Am Legend and King Richard (also giving shout-outs to Aladdin and Bad Boys). Check out his remarks below via Hot Ones (around 19:37 of the clip):

I think the individual best movie all around that I’ve ever made is The Pursuit of Happyness. Right behind that is the first Men In Black. … I think among the most fun I’ve ever had making a movie is Bad Boys and Aladdin, just the most fun. All around best movies, best performances, if I had to put four of them in a time capsule, it would be Pursuit of Happyness, the first Men in Black, it would be I Am Legend and probably King Richard.

What Are Smith’s Four Best Movies According To Rotten Tomatoes

Will Smiths points to his neuralyzer as Agent J in Men in Black

Smith has personal reasons for choosing the four movies he selected, picking an acclaimed but perhaps surprising role in The Pursuit of Happyness, a star vehicle in Men in Black that helped propel him to huge commercial heights, a later hit film in I Am Legend and his Oscar-winning King Richard. If Rotten Tomatoes were to choose Smith’s Mount Rushmore, the list would look a little different.

Will Smith’s Rotten Tomatoes Top Four
Critics’ Score
Audience Score

Men in Black (1997)
91%
80%

King Richard (2021)
90%
98%

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
88%
71%

Where the Day Takes You (1992)
80%
73%

Critical consensus (as represented by Rotten Tomatoes) concurs with half of Smith’s own top 4, agreeing that Men in Black and King Richard belong there. I Am Legend and The Pursuit of Happyness do not make the RT top four, however. A pair of very early and relatively unheralded Smith movies make the RT-approved Mount Rushmore instead: Six Degrees of Separation and Where the Day Takes You.

I Am Legend (68%) and Pursuit of Happyness (67%) both come in as “fresh” according to Rotten Tomatoes, but don’t rank highly enough to make the top four. It’s yet to be seen where Bad Boys: Ride or Die will fall on the ultimate rundown of Smith movies, either at the box office or in the estimation of critics and audiences. It could represent a career highlight for the star, or it could prove to be another setback on his road to making the public forget about The Slap.

Source: Hot Ones