Collateral Beauty

"Collateral Beauty" was probably the worst reviewed film of 2016 and it tanked at the box office. Because of this mauling and ignoring, I really wanted to like it. Critics and audiences aren't always right. They rejected "Lions for Lambs," and that was a terrific film.

Will Smith plays Howard, a revered NY ad exec who loses his young daughter to brain cancer and retreats from the world completely. Three years later, his closest associates (Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Michael Pe�a) in a mad attempt to save the company (and their pocketbooks) devise a cockamamie plan to either bring him back to reality or prove he's mentally unbalanced. See, Howard has mailed notes to Love, Time and Death... yes those popular abstractions. And, luckily enough, the private eye hired to discredit Howard (a rather ridiculous Ann Dowd) has intercepted the letters.

Luckier still, Ed Norton's character has recently stumbled upon a trio of struggling thespians (Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, Jacob Latimore) in need of acting work. So he devises a plan to hire these three to portray Love, Time and Death to jostle Howard back or send him over the edge.

Sounds like a great comedy, right? The problem is, it's not a comedy. Not a deliberate one, anyway. It's a ploddingly serious drama -- worse, a dramatic fable.

I forced myself to buy into the premise, despite being fairly certain what the two "surprises" were going to be in the final reel (and knowing how much it would truly piss me off if I was right...) But midway through, it became so apparent that no actor was being allowed to play a real character and each of them were just there to spout wisdom and platitudes. There was no room for any truth in this "fable" (with one exception). The viewer is carefully steered through every part of the narrative and told exactly how to feel. In the end, I felt cheated -- and angry.

And those twists did, indeed, happen in true '80s Hollywood craptacular fashion. Had the filmmakers had the balls to actually follow through with what they were teasing all along, the film might have actually taken an interesting turn.

So how do so many good actors get stuck in such a misguided enterprise? Wanting to work with one another, I am guessing? Or getting paid a lot of money!

And is "Collateral Beauty" truly as bad as everyone says it is? Yes. And no.

On the down side, we have manipulative and on-the-nose-at-every-interval script by Allan Loeb, we have an annoyingly obtrusive score by Theodore Shapiro and "Patch Adams" meets "Sixth Sense" pandering direction by David Frankel ("The Devil Wears Prada").

We also have Smith giving a frowny one-note performance that BORES. We get it your miserable! Vary the angst and devastation a little! To this day I have yet to see Smith deliver more than two emotions onscreen: happy and sad.

Even the explanation of the meaning of the title is a head scratcher.

On the upside?

Well, it's always nice to see Mirren, Winslet & Knightley, they're all very pretty. Mirren, in particular, camps it up and allows for a few moments of levity.

Naomie Harris, who plays a grieving parent, is actually the one thing about this drek that makes it almost worth sitting though. She rises above the clich�s when she can to truly make you feel.

Oh and the Blu-ray does look terrific (kudos to Maryse Alberti's cinematography).

The one Special Feature, "A Modern Fable: Discovering Collateral Beauty," is a 15-minute self-congratulatory piece that, post-mortem, plays more like an apologia. The Mount-Rushmore-of-acting-cast hurls hosannas onto the project and one another, while Frankel prophetically states, "There's not a person who reads this script that doesn't break down in tears." When all was said and done, I'm sure a few of the creatives cried like babies.

"Collateral Beauty"
Blu-ray & Digital HD UltraViolet
$19.96
https://www.warnerbros.com/collateral-beauty