Review of Collateral Beauty (2016) by Dspratlin — 23 Dec 2016

What’s it about?

An advertising executive (Will Smith) totally shuts down when tragedy strikes. His “concerned” friends (Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Michael Pena) try to help when he starts questioning the universe and writing letters to the concept of Time, Death and Love.

What did I think?

The intriguing trailer for this film is a lie. The concept, so artfully set up in the preview, is destroyed minutes into the film, creating a jarring effect that leaves a bitter, mean-spirited aftertaste. Collateral Beauty is emotionally manipulative (think Hallmark Channel movie-level) and seems to be created specifically to tug so **** hard on heartstrings that it makes some kind of discordant non-musical cacophony of awfulness. It’s a movie purely about emotions that feels like it was made by someone who doesn’t understand how to human at all. It gets two stars for what I thought the concept was, and the rest of the three taken off for what the actual movie robbed me of.