“I was hesitant about watching this one because it looked kinda dumb in the trailers. And as the reviews started coming out, they all affirmed that yes this movie is as dumb as it looks. However, I’m very loyal to Edward Norton, so I really had no choice. I just now realized my loyalty means I’ll be obligated to buy this and watch it again later. Oy.
Hey look, we’ve reached the second paragraph, which is generally where I give you the plot summary. The trailer actually presented a slightly different version of the story than what actually happened. Will Smith plays a guy who lost his daughter a few years ago, and he’s never been the same since. The way the trailer presents the story is that in his plunge towards madness, he starts writing letters to the universe, specifically to death, time, and love. He then starts being visited by these higher powers that try to help him thru his grief. The people around him think he’s losing it. The way it played out isn’t too far from that, but they key difference is that first his colleagues think he’s losing it, so then they hire actors to play those universal forces and visit him. It’s a very different thing for him to be magically meeting with those abstract concepts vs meeting with people pretending to be them.
Not that it really made it any better. The movie was overly sentimental and emotionally manipulative and very trite, which is sad because it’s a waste of such an incredible mix of actors: the aforementioned Smith and Norton, Helen Mirren, Keira Knightly, Michael Pena, Kate Winslet, Naomie Harris. With smarter material, this could have been something fantastic. Alas, that’s not what we got, and I’m really having a hard time understanding how/why they all signed up for this.
Collateral Beauty – \m/ \m/”