My Review of Collateral Beauty

        So I recently watched Collateral Beauty and I'm here to bring you my review. So without further ado...







        When a successful New York advertising executive (played by Will Smith) suffers a great tragedy, he retreats from life. While his concerned friends try desperately to reconnect with him, he seeks answers from the universe by writing letters to Love (played by Keira Knightley), Time (played by Jacob Latimore) and Death (played by Helen Mirren). When his notes bring unexpected personal responses, he begins to understand how these constants interlock in a life fully lived and how even the deepest loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty.


        This is a very disappointing film. When you look at a film like this with an absolutely all-star cast, you would expect the film to be somewhat entertaining and have some really great performances... well you don't get the entertaining film, but there are some pretty decent performances. The plot of this film might be the biggest lie in cinematic history. The trailers showed you a film that looked to be a real character study as you follow this man on his journey to help himself get over the death of his daughter and if you really want to know what the real plot of the film is then scroll down just a bit for the continuation of the review. 

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Will Smith writes the letters to each of these essences and in the trailer we are shown that they appear to him as living beings that only he can see. However the reality is that Will Smith's coworkers played by Edward Norton, Michael Pena and Kate Winslet work for him. They believe that his depressive nature will cost them their jobs. so they hire actors on the streets of New York to portray these entities and videotape these encounters, edit the actors out and prove that Will Smith is crazy and force him to lose his job so that his coworkers can keep theirs.

        Now knowing what the film is really about, really makes you wonder how this film was made and how the filmmakers were able to get by with this pile of garbage plot. None of the characters outside of Will Smith are remotely likable and none of them have any redeemable qualities. With that being said, the performances were outstanding and the ability of actors like Helen Mirren, Edward Norton and others to portray this despicable characters is very impressive. Every time Will Smith's character is onscreen you do see the pain that he is struggling with, but it's not as effective as it could be due to the lack of moments we don't get of him and his daughter to really just pound home how close they were. There are more emotional moments sprinkled in here and there,but you don't really care for them do to the lack of empathy shown by the rest of the cast. Overall this film was a huge missed opportunity for the film studio and instead you get the biggest curve in marketing you'll ever see which just comes off as sickening and disgusting and at the end you not like any of the characters even though there are some good performances. I give Collateral Beauty a 1.5 out of 10.

        So ladies and gentlemen what did you think of Collateral Beauty, what would you rate it and what did you think of my review? Let me know in the comments section below and let your voice be heard.

                                                                                                                          Jonah Sparks