Post by PhantomKnight on Jul 17, 2017 14:58:05 GMT -5
Not sure if anybody else on here will ever see this movie, but I had to get my thoughts out.
Collateral Beauty has got to be, without doubt, one of the most mind-boggling movies I've seen in a while, not to mention mis-marketed. The latter part honestly came as no surprise to me, as I'd heard beforehand what exactly goes down in this movie, but seeing is believing. In order to really touch upon what's so weird and wrong about this movie, I'm going to have to get into spoilers, so...fair warning?
The trailers for Collateral Beauty would have you believe that the film is essentially a modern day retelling of A Christmas Carol. Three spirits -- in this case, the embodiments of Time, Love and Death -- visit a still-grieving man who lost his young daughter to illness some time ago and help him cope with and move beyond the pain. But, oh no, that's not what this movie is. Those spirits calling themselves Time, Love and Death? Those are just actors hired by the main character's friends/shareholders in his company to help paint a picture of mental illness about him so that they can convince the board that he's not fit to run his company anymore.
And that's the backbone of this movie's problem.
It think it's being all touching, emotional and heartwarming, but it's just cynical. The way these "friends" of Will Smith go about trying to "help" him feels like the work of self-centered assholes rather than caring friends. If they're supposed to come off as sympathetic, then the screenwriter just fails. Also, there are quite a few times where the tone of the movie just feels off. It's supposed to be a drama, but there are numerous scenes where it feels like it's going for something light and almost...whimsical? Nope, doesn't work.
But here's the thing: the acting in this movie is actually good. And the performances are deserving of a much better script. So much of this movie is wrong, though, that it just cancels them out.
What happened here?
*/****
Collateral Beauty has got to be, without doubt, one of the most mind-boggling movies I've seen in a while, not to mention mis-marketed. The latter part honestly came as no surprise to me, as I'd heard beforehand what exactly goes down in this movie, but seeing is believing. In order to really touch upon what's so weird and wrong about this movie, I'm going to have to get into spoilers, so...fair warning?
The trailers for Collateral Beauty would have you believe that the film is essentially a modern day retelling of A Christmas Carol. Three spirits -- in this case, the embodiments of Time, Love and Death -- visit a still-grieving man who lost his young daughter to illness some time ago and help him cope with and move beyond the pain. But, oh no, that's not what this movie is. Those spirits calling themselves Time, Love and Death? Those are just actors hired by the main character's friends/shareholders in his company to help paint a picture of mental illness about him so that they can convince the board that he's not fit to run his company anymore.
And that's the backbone of this movie's problem.
It think it's being all touching, emotional and heartwarming, but it's just cynical. The way these "friends" of Will Smith go about trying to "help" him feels like the work of self-centered assholes rather than caring friends. If they're supposed to come off as sympathetic, then the screenwriter just fails. Also, there are quite a few times where the tone of the movie just feels off. It's supposed to be a drama, but there are numerous scenes where it feels like it's going for something light and almost...whimsical? Nope, doesn't work.
Also, there are two twists in this movie that are just dumb. First, throughout the movie, we see Will Smith's character attend a grief counseling group led by Naomie Harris. It's established early on that Harris's character lost a child of her own and that Smith's character distanced himself from his wife after the death of his own daughter. Well, wouldn't you know, Smith and Harris turn out to be husband and wife, and they were going through this stupid play-acting where they pretended not to know each other because of some line Smith had where he said he wished he could get to know his wife all over again. Come on. And THEN...those actors (Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley and Jacob Lattimer) playing Death, Love and Time? Welp, turns out they really ARE Death, Love and Time, but they were just pretending to be actors when we first meet them. Come on.
But here's the thing: the acting in this movie is actually good. And the performances are deserving of a much better script. So much of this movie is wrong, though, that it just cancels them out.
What happened here?
*/****
