Collateral Beauty (2016)

Collateral Beauty (2016)

Not sure where to start, apart from the fact that this film is terrible – literally terrible. Maybe not Battlefield Earth standard of awful but it is certainly up there. The Christmas season has always been affiliated with a plethora of appalling films - New Year’s Eve and Dirty Grandpa spring to mind. Collateral Beauty is no different. It begins with Will Smith’s character Howard suffering the trauma of losing his infant child. Unable to cope with the loss, Howard becomes a recluse. As his company starts to decay in his absence, his ‘friends’ played by Ed Norton, Kate Winslet and Michael Pena become concerned over their company assets. So they decide to follow Howard, revealing he has sent letters to the three “abstractions” – yes, just go with it – love, death and time. And in their kindness and friendship, they call upon failing actors, most notably played by Helen Mirren, to impersonate these abstractions and meet Howard, to then have that meeting recorded with the actors edited out to substantiate the claim that Howard is unfit to run the company. The reason that sounds long winded – is because it is.

However, as the film was progressing I was thinking that yes this was rubbish, but maybe it would stay true to its boldness of having friends manipulating a traumatized father for financial gain. And while it would still be rubbish, it would be ever so slightly commendable in a laughable kind of way. Then the dual twists happens. I was surprised the audience didn’t collectively raise a synchronised hand gesture toward the screen. I left feeling like the philosophy post graduate who wrote this film was trying to prove that they were the smartest person in the auditorium.

Collateral Beauty is a mess and is simply a film for agnostic moviegoers who are still caught up in festive cheer.