MY REVIEW

Despite the unforeseeable tragedies that knock us down, we should always accept them as part of the natural flow of life. That being said, given the innumerable profundities that could be mined from this thematic framework, David Frankel's new film makes an amazing choice: half-ass it.

Collateral Beauty comes forward promising to uplift us and provide strong insight into what drives us as human beings and how we can make the best of the worst, but the film tells its story with minimal innovation, relying on bare-bones methods instead of smarter visual storytelling to communicate its themes to the audience. Even worse, given these characters' distinct dilemmas, there seems to be no effort to delve into their inner psyches, robbing us of the vital inner connection needed to understand why certain characters act the way they do. For example, this is all we get of Will Smith losing his daughter: (1) co-worker tells co-worker "kid died", (2) Smith has a vision of late daughter's face, (3) Smith rides his bike every night with exasperated expressions. And it all ends in a lax twist that makes the entire film before it worth nothing for Smith's character.

Collateral Beauty isn't offensively bad. It does have noble things to say and these A-list performers are uniformly good with their paper-thin personas, but given that it holds the innovation and thematic depth of a Hallmark card, it truly doesn't deserve a place on the big screen.

1.5/5