Review – Collateral Beauty

Collateral Beauty is the cinematic equivalent of being promised a giant, juicy dinner and then getting to the table and being served celery wrapped in white bread with a side of white rice.  It is incredibly disappointing and painfully bland.

The movie is essentially about sad rich people.  Howard (Will Smith) is an incredibly successful ad executive with a great team of friends and co-workers behind him (Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Michael Peña).  After Howard loses his daughter, he struggles to keep his business and friendships afloat.  He seeks therapy by writing letters to Love, Time, and Death, and, much to his surprise, they answer his letters and make him realize what they really mean.

So the plot and story of the movie are a little different than what I explained about.  I don’t want to say how because it would be a spoiler of sorts, but it is a slightly different than what is advertised.  But that didn’t bother me.  What did bother me was the way the movie made me feel.  It didn’t.  Maybe it’s because the two movies I saw before this, A Monster Calls and Lion, are both emotional powerhouses, maybe it’s because I’m a soulless ginger, but this movie has no feeling at all.  For being the definition of a melodrama, this has no drama.  This had a heavy subject matter and a lot of other subplots happening that could have had the tears flowing.  But instead, we get a generic, dull, predictable movie that telegaphs what is going to happen from a mile away.

The movie should have been called Sad Rich People, because that’s all it really is.  Every character in the movie has an issue they are trying to solve in their personal life and they are trying to find the answers on how to solve their issues, all while dressing really nice and working in a spectacular office building.  I had little empathy for any of these characters and at the end of the day, that is what drives movies.

I am becoming genuinely concerned with Will Smith’s movie choices.  Since 2010, he has been in two movies that I would consider pretty good movies, being Men in Black 3 (2012) and last year’s Concussion (2015).  But, he’s also made a number of bad ones and Collateral Beauty can be added to that list.  Collateral Beauty, as a movie, isn’t as bad as Smith’s other 2016 entry, Suicide Squad, but his performance is far worse.  At least in Suicide Squad we were able to see Smith kick ass and take names while flashing his untouchable charisma and swagger.  In Collateral Beauty, all the charm of Smith vanishes.  Obviously these films are two different genres, but even in Smith’s other dramatic performances, like in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) and Seven Pounds (2008), we see glimpses of the Fresh Prince.  Here, he just stares angrily with watering eyes.  He has one scene with Keira Knightley (Love) that’s pretty good, but it is far too brief to consider this a good performance.

Along with Smith, we get Oscar winners Kate Winslet and Hellen Mirren, Oscar nominees Edward Norton and Kiera Knightley, the always great Michael Peña, and up and comers Jacob Latimore and soon to be Oscar nominee Naomi Harris.  You would think this cast together would make a good movie, but they all seem like they are sleepwalking through it.  Latimore, who was excellent in the Sundance magic-thriller Sleight, was easily my favorite performance as the fiery Time, and Mirren looks like she is having a good time as Death.  Everyone else is expendable and waste their talent in this movie.

Collateral Beauty is a star-studded, Oscar-bait dud that fails to muster up any emotion.  It is a bland, boring movie and an unfortunate entry into my Worst of the Year list.

MY RATING – 1/4

Did you see Collateral Beauty?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook and YouTube by searching Kevflix.