Will Smith’s New Oscar-Bait Movie Is Getting Hilariously Shredded

Oh no. Oh no no no.

It’s always so heart-breaking when you see a favourite actor in a godforsaken movie, and with the supremely stacked cast of ‘Collateral Beauty‘, there’s going to be at least one for ya’.

‘Collateral Beauty’ had such high hopes. Will Smith leads as Howard, the ad man broken by the grief of losing his daughter who spends his time writing letters to the metaphorical concepts of Love, Time and Death.

Then you’ve got his minority partners Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, and Michael Peña, and the ‘minority’ is important here because I assume it’s the only reason Howard, also partner, hasn’t lost his job yet.

Unsure in how to help their friend, they decide on the worst possible course of action and hire three struggling out-of-work actors – Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley and Jacob Latimore – to physically embody Death, Love and Time respectively. Let that one marinate for a second. Dame Helen Mirren. Out-of-work actor. Honestly, this movie’s just not believable.

And then on top of that, you have Naomie Harris as the grief support group leader. So yeah. Stacked.

‘Collateral Beauty’ was meant to be primed as juicy Oscar-bait, but instead it’s sliding in to pip The Worst Movie of 2016. Maybe in years to come they’ll screen it at art house cinemas and let people throw spoons as it, I don’t know.

What I do know is: the critics are shredding this film to fucking pieces.

(Warning: this film has a few ‘twists’ and they might be spoiled. You can probably risk it.)

The five stages of grief sometimes seem applicable to movie reviewing, except that I usually skip denial, rarely get around to acceptance and generally just settle into anger, which is where I am with “Collateral Beauty.” Many of the words that I would like to use to describe this waste of talent and time, which riffs on Dickens’s eternal “A Christmas Carol” and tries to manufacture feeling by offing Tiny Tim, can’t be lobbed in a family publication. So, instead, I will just start by throwing out some permissible insults: artificial, clichéd, mawkish, preposterous, incompetent, sexist, laughable, insulting.

– Manohla Dargis, NY Times 

It’s a dumb idea for a movie, but it’s even dumber that Warner Bros. sold the film as something it’s not. 

Maybe Collateral Beauty is missing an hour of footage or something, but I’m more willing to bet somebody read a first draft of the movie’s script, convinced Will Smith to sign on, and then said, “Put some Christmas lights on everything. We’ll release it in December. It’ll be fine.”

– Todd VanDer Werff, Vox 

Somewhere in a forest, a maple tree wants all its sap back.


– Mara Reisntein, Us Weekly.

Even if it hadn’t come along so soon after Manchester by the Sea, Kenneth Lonergan‘s symphonic drama about a father emotionally crippled by loss, Collateral Beauty would look like silly high-concept Hollywood grief porn.

– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter.

It’s near impossible to make a movie with no redeeming features – but damned if Collateral Beauty doesn’t hits the zero-stars jackpot. The unholy mess that director David Frankel and screenwriter Allan Loeb have unleashed for the holidays strands an all-star cast – including Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton and Keira Knightley – on a sinking ship that churns the waters from absurd to zombified with frequent stops at pretentious.

– Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.

The Will Smith weepie “Collateral Beauty” couldn’t be more calculated and manipulative if it slapped you on the back, shoved a giant lollipop into your mouth and immediately tried to sell you a time share in Tampa.

– Kyle Smith, New York Post.

Does Collateral Beauty feature an out-of-nowhere monologue in which a side character explains the invented concept of “collateral beauty,” but not well enough for the audience to understand why the movie needs a term for it? Of course it does. Having somehow amassed an embarrassingly overqualified cast, director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me) embraces the schematic structure: Howard gets two scenes with each of the out-of-work actors (introduction, confrontation), each of the actors is paired up with one of Howard’s partners, and so on and so forth. The only advantage of this is that it makes it very easy to measure how much time the film has left. And it’s not even very long.

– Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club

At least Norton finally gets to play a character named Whit, which has somehow not happened already.

– Emily Yoshida, Vulture.


You wanna watch the trailer? Okay, watch the trailer.

Photo: Supplied.

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