The Hollywood tearjerker is an art form of pure privilege. Your life a little too comfy and bright? Here are some well-paid, attractive people acting out manipulative drivel to get those eyes a-weepinâ. At this particular moment in history there are some pretty fucking important things to cry about for realâbut here comes Collateral Beauty, a vile shitfleck of a movie that whispers, âNo, no, donât worry about Aleppo; shhh, donât grieve over the death of American democracy,â then tells you some baloney about dead cancer kids and thrusts a box of tissues into your hand.
What does Collateral Beauty want you to cry about? Will Smith lost his kid to cancer and is super-sad. We know this because his brow is perpetually furrowed and he prepares elaborate domino setups, only to watch them fall. One day he mails physical letters to the abstract constructs of âDeath,â âLove,â and âTime,â and his coworkersâEdward Norton, Kate Winslet, and Michael Peñaâdecide heâs a little too cuckoo-bananas to be running his very expensive ad agency. They agree to gaslight him, cheat him out of his shares, and sell the company. Per the screenplayâs disgusting logic, they do it out of love.
So the shitty coworkers/friends hire New Yorkâs smallest theater troupeâHelen Mirren, Keira Knightley, and Jacob Latimoreâto play the roles of Death, Love, and Time and confront sad, domino-watching Will Smith. The interactions are filmed and then digitally altered to suggest Will Smith is talking to himself. Grieving dadâs sanity questioned, company sold, problem solved!
Except the movie has some stupid tricks up its sleeve (including more cancer), and the shitty coworkers have their own issues to resolve with death, love, and time. âThatâs right!â says Collateral Beauty. âFuck you and take this box of tissues.â