Collateral Beauty comes from an original screenplay written by Allan Loeb (21, Here Comes the Boom). Based on the trailers, you'd think this was inspired by some Dickensian novel ripe for favorable comparisons to A Christmas Carol or even, at the very least, to Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. Director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) helms a tear-jerking soap opera of a film about coping with loss that is well beneath the abilities of its talented cast. Collateral Beauty is so corny and so blatantly Oscar-baity that even the third act twist does little to rescue it from insipidity.
Having said this, Will Smith hands in what may be his finest performance to date as Howard, an advertising executive struggling to get over the death of his six-year-old daughter. His personal relationships have withered as a result, threatening his stake in his business and leaving his colleagues (Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Michael Pena) scrambling to find a solution. Howard copes by writing and mailing letters to what he claims are life's three most crucial absolutes - Love, Death and Time. "We long for love, we wish we had more time, and we fear death," he says.
To pull Howard out of this funk, Whit (Norton), Claire (Winslet) and Simon (Pena) hire three struggling stage actors - Brigitte (Helen Mirren, as a struggling stage actor? Seriously?), Amy (Keira Knightley) and Raffi (Jacob Latimore) - to portray Death, Love and Time respectively. They are tasked with confronting Howard and coaching him through the grieving process, trying to get him to see the beauty of life's gifts. But the one who finally gets Howard over the hump is Madeleine (Naomi Harris), a counselor who heads a support group for parents of deceased children.
All this sounds fine and fun and innocent enough until you figure out that all the characters only speak to each other in platitudes. Every line of dialogue in Loeb's script feels like either an empty quip or some emotional speech. The film tries to say poignant things, but it just comes off cloying. Real people don't talk this way, and that, to me, feels like the wrong way to approach a film with a subject as sensitive as the death of a child. Michael Pena works in a handful of funny moments, but they're not enough to save the movie.
Collateral Beauty is designed to make you cry in the same mindlessly cornball way as beach literature. One way or another you'll feel drained by the end - either of emotion or sanity. In this case, it may be both.
C- (For Will Smith's performance only)
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