Directed by: David Frankel
Written by: Allan Loeb
Starring: Will Smith, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet
This movie is designed to make you cry, yet as the film came to its climax, I burst out laughing.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Collateral Beauty is about love, death, and time. It's easy to know this because, rather than attempt any form of subtlety, the film talks about them constantly. We're introduced to Howard (Smith), the CEO of an advertising company whose daughter died two years ago, leaving Howard a shell. The only communication he makes is three letters he writes: one to love, one to time, and one to death (they seriously repeat these words over and over in the movie, I felt like I was being beaten over the head). Howard's business friends (Norton, Winslet and Michael Pena) find out about these letters, and pay actors to appear before Howard as love, time and death (Keira Knightley. Jacob Latimore, and Helen Mirren respectively). Howard's friends then record these encounters and digitally remove the actors from the shots in order to make Howard look crazy, so that they can convince a board that Howard is unfit to command the company, and save the company before it goes bankrupt. As I sit here describing it now, the film just becomes worse and worse in my mind. The plot is so unnecessarily complicated and morally awful, and the execution is just so illogical. What's terrible is, this isn't even the worst of it.
Norton, Winslet and Pena's characters all have some issue related to love, time and death respectively, because of course they do. Norton has a daughter that hates him because he cheated on his wife, her mother, and he just wants her to love him again (gotta have him relate to love in the most obviously sad way). Winslet is fighting her biological clock, running out of time to have a child (please kill me). Pena is dying of cancer that has plagued him at various points in his life (and just happens to be coming back now). All of these issues are mentioned once and then promptly solved by a couple of "deep and meaningful" sayings. This is so feeble, but it's also hypocritical, because the film takes the time to condemn the same sorts of sayings offered by religions and other coping mechanisms people use to deal with their problems, as if the cliches this film offers are somehow better.
This film is so stupid it hurts, so I won't talk about it much longer, but I do want to talk about the end. Throughout the film, Howard has gone to this woman who runs a grief counseling group for parents who have lost their children. The two have a few chats, but don't appear to really know each other. However, at the climax of the film, it is revealed that this woman is actually Howard's ex-wife whom he divorced after the death of their daughter. The two behave as complete strangers before this point, and the film's justification of this is 'they had to become strangers again so they could fall in love', or something to that effect. It was at this point that the film broke me, and I was unable to stop laughing. To make matters worse, the film shortly after insinuates that the three actors who played love, time and death are actually love, time and death; again, all I could do was laugh at how badly this film was trying to make me care, while in fact doing the opposite.
The Verdict: I found Collateral Beauty to be nothing more than an obvious and pathetic attempt to manipulate my emotions. The main plot ends up being far less relatable than it's trying to be, and the subplots are all poorly developed and solved easily, making for nothing but a series of serious issues being overcome with a few weak platitudes that aren't deep just because charismatic people say them. I absolutely do not recommend seeing this film. You may get some appeal out of it if you cast aside the irrationality of the plot and have never heard people talk about love, death and time before, but otherwise this film is just a waste.
Rating: 2/10
Published January 15th, 2017
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