There's a point in Collateral Beauty when Will Smith tells Ed Norton, "I'm disappointed in you." That's exactly how I feel about everyone who signed on to this disaster.
Collateral Beauty is the kind of movie you want to like! The cast is spectacular. The trailer gives the appearance of a sappy, Oscar-bait movie that nonetheless uplifts you with warm and fuzzy feelings. Unfortunately, the Collateral Beauty trailer is one of the most deceptive trailers I've ever seen. After seeing the movie, I tried to describe the plot to my girlfriend; she initially assumed I was making it up, because there was no way actors of this caliber would possibly agree to make a movie so catastrophically nonsensical. This movie's plot is, quite literally, unbelievable; unfortunately it is all too real, and the kind of movie that's only worth your time if you're a fan of the "so-bad-it's-good" genre.
Based on the trailer, I thought this would be a movie about a severely traumatized/depressed executive Howard Inlet (Will Smith), and his concerned colleagues Whit Yardsham (Ed Norton), Claire Wilson (Kate Winslet), and Simon Scott (Michael Peña) trying to re-connect with Howard. The trailer suggests actors attempting to personify time, death, and love to better understand and revitalize Howard, and the so-called "collateral beauty" in life. That plot sounds pretty sappy, but at least it would be an honest manifestation of the trailer.
Here's the actual plot: brilliant Howard is an ad executive whose daughter died three years ago; ever since then he has retreated into an emotional shell. He comes to work every day, but no longer does anything except for building gigantic domino designs (the symbolism in this movie is about as subtle as a tornado). The company is slowly falling into the red, and Whit, Claire, and Simon would like to cut their losses and sell out; however, Howard controls the majority of the shares. Since Howard can't be reasoned with, they decide they must convince the board that Howard is too incompetent to vote. But also they're totally his friends and care about him and want to help Howard heal!
Whit, Claire, and Simon learn that Howard writes letters to love, death, and time, and actually mails them, the same way a kid would mail a letter to Santa Clause. So they come up with the following scheme: they hire three community theater actors to play the Angels of Love (Kiera Knightley), Death (Helen Mirren), and Time (Jacob Latimore). Each actor will go up to Howard and pretend to be responding to the letter he or she received from Howard. The actors will convince Howard that he is actually talking to a celestial angel. They even hire supporting actors to walk by and pretend that they can't see the people with whom Howard converses. They will then film Howard engaging in an earnest conversation with the angels, erase the three actors from the video, and thus make it look like Howard is hallucinating and talking to an angel that isn't there.
This is so unbelievably stupid I couldn't make it up if I tried. First of all, wouldn't the fact that Howard spends all day playing with dominos be proof enough that he is not in a right state of mind to vote on the company's fate? Second, is this even legal? Third, how are we supposed to believe these people actually care about Howard finding peace when they are willing to engage in something so unethical? What's more, the movie uses screwball banter and lighthearted music to play all of this off as somehow cute and endearing.
Does this hare-brained scheme work? Well, sort of. In one scene, Howard is talking to a support group leader about how he thinks he is seeing hallucinations. A short few scenes later, Howard is watching the video at a board meeting and immediately sees right through the scheme. But guess what - he is totally ok with being manipulated! At the drop of a hat he decides he cares about the company's finances again and will do whatever everyone else wants! This is the opposite of earned catharsis - it's totally cheap, non-sequiturial.
The movie's subplots aren't as incompetent as the main one, but they're still cliched and overly sentimental. Each of the ad firm's partners works one on one with each actor playing an angel, and wouldn't you know it, the concept that actor represents looms large in that partner's life! Whit, who is divorced, learns that if he truly loves his daughter he won't let anything stop him from spending time with her (apparently the custody arrangement is 'whatever Whit's daughter feels like in the moment'). Claire learns that there's always time to start a family (did you know that Women can in fact have it all??!). Simon, who has cancer, learns that he's only hurting his family by hiding his impending death from them (apparently he can't tell his family about his cancer but he'll gladly tell an actress he met a week ago). Meanwhile, Howard begins attending a support group for parents who lost their children at young ages. At first Howard refuses to discuss his daughter's death, but eventually he and the support group leader Madeleine (Naomi Harris) fall in love, and learn that their daughters died of the same rare form of cancer. Both of these twists are about as shocking as the sun rising in the east. With all this, the movie clearly wants to make a point about how much of a difference one person can make in your life; I just wish the film could do so without being as mushy as a Garry Marshall holiday movie.
Let's not mince words - this movie is a trainwreck. The tonal shifts are jarring - from one scene to the next it can go from a melancholy drama to a fun romp to the cinematic equivalent of an inspirational Hallmark card. Will Smith's best acting qualities are his warmth, dry humor, and charisma, which makes it bizarre to cast him in such a dour, laconic role. The movie's title, "Collateral Beauty" doesn't mean anything (supposedly the meaning of the phrase is quite clear to Naomi Harris, not that she bothers to communicate that to the audience). The best thing I can say about Collateral Beauty is that the plot, inane as it may be, is at least developed somewhat coherently and competently. For that reason, Mr Right is still, in my mind, the worst movie of the year - but only by a small margin.
Grade: 2.2/10
