People tend to get sentimental around the holidays, and for
good reason: another year is winding down, everyone’s spending time with
friends and family, and we’re feeling nostalgic. A little sentimentality on
those dark, cold winter nights can feel as comforting as a cozy fleece blanket.
But bury yourself too much and you might suffocate on all that good cheer.
“Collateral
Beauty” should come with a warning label. It’s trite
melodrama sprinkled with holiday magic, and then drained of character, nuance,
and any shred of reality. Pandering and manipulative, the film is determined to
get tears from audiences if it has to squeeze them out of you by force.
Will Smith
stars as Howard, a once successful New York City advertising executive who
never recovered from the death of his 6-year-old daughter two years before.
He’s withdrawn from his life, his friends, and his career. He spends his days
constructing elaborate domino setups in his office, and then knocking them down
(why he bothers to go into work to do this is beyond me). His friends and
professional partners, Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet), and Simon
(Michael Peรฑa), are growing desperate; his refusal to re-engage and get back to
work is jeopardizing the agency they all own together.
And so his friends
hire a private investigator (the wonderful Ann Dowd, in a nothing role) to
follow Howard and get a better read on his state of mind. While tailing him,
she discovers that he’s been writing letters to Love, Death, and Time — concepts
that Howard believes are the three constants in life — and he’s got a bone to
pick with them all.
Whit,
Claire, and Simon see an opportunity, and an odd plan is hatched: they’ll hire
three local actors to portray Death (Helen Mirren), Love (Keira Knightley), and
Time (Jacob Latimore). They ask each one to talk with Howard and get him to air
his grievances out loud, while their investigator secretly films the exchanges.
They believe this might offer Howard some sort of catharsis. But barring that,
it might provide them with enough evidence of his instability that they can
wrest control of the agency and salvage what they can of a rapidly sinking
ship. At first, it seems as though the deception on the part of Howard’s
friends might add an interesting wrinkle to the story, but Allan Loeb’s script
never really bothers to explore that idea.
Meanwhile
Howard is making tentative steps on his own, constantly milling about outside a
support group for grieving parents, led by Madeleine (Naomie
Harris, right off her terrific performance in “Moonlight”). She implores him to
appreciate the “collateral beauty,” a nonsense phrase that’s her way of saying
that beautiful, positive moments can be found in even the most
dire of circumstances. It’s a lovely message, but there has to be a
better way to convey it than having characters stand around explaining it to
us.
In essence,
the story is a twist on “A Christmas Carol,” with Howard being visited by (what
he believes to be) three spirits, but other than that director David Frankel
doesn’t bother much with the holiday milieu. The story appears to be set during
the Christmas season mostly so the filmmaker can fill his movie with bokeh light effects and arrange his cast in front of
pretty, twinkling lights while they endlessly explain their feelings.
“Collateral
Beauty” boasts the type of cast that makes you wonder what on Earth attracted
them to such an ill-conceived script (besides a new vacation home or the draw
of working with one another). The actors do a fine enough job, but none are
given much to work with.
Loeb’s
script treats human experience like a puzzle in which the pieces must all
neatly fit into place. He bends over backward trying to tie everything together
in a neat package wrapped up with a bow and presented with some “Ta dah!” hand
flourishes. Its carefully constructed rendering of humanity feels alien and
unnatural, like it was written by someone who read a detailed description of
emotion in a book once.
The story
crams in as much trauma as possible; in addition to dead children, there’s also
terminal illness, a parent facing dementia, and a ticking biological clock.
There are affecting moments, but any real emotion gets smothered under the
strained plot machinations. It doesn’t help that “Manchester
by the Sea,” a much more honest portrayal of grief, opened in Rochester
theaters just last week.
If you’re in
the mood for something sappy, schmaltzy, and more than a little silly,
“Collateral Beauty” will probably scratch that itch. But its smothering
benevolence just might be hazardous to your health.
Visit rochestercitynewspaper.com on Friday for additional film coverage, including a review of the documentary
“Peter and the Farm.”
This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2016.
