Review: ‘Collateral Beauty’: too many twists, metaphors muddle potential plot

Warning: if you haven’t watched Collateral Beauty yet, the following review contains major plot spoilers.

Collateral Beauty follows advertising mogul Howard (Will Smith) as he descends into the dark reaches of grief when he loses his daughter to cancer. In his six months of grief, he starts mailing letters to the abstract concepts of Love, Time, and Death. His friends Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet), and Simon (Michael Peña) start getting concerned for him. That is, until these same concepts turn into human beings and introduce themselves to him. And so, Howard begins his journey to find life once again.

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Or so the story should go.

You see, trailers are funny things. Mainly controlled by the marketing team, trailers can beautify how the film actually is. Their job is to get butts in the seat, after all. But at the very least, they should give you a truthful idea of what to expect from the plot. Collateral Beauty’s trailers are liars.

These so-called “friends” who supposedly want to help Howard? They’re actually his business partners. Too caught up in grief, Howard won’t sign sale contracts that could potentially save the business. So, his partners decide to hire actors to portray Love (Keira Knightley), Time (Jacob Latimore), and Death (Helen Mirren). His partners will then film these staged conversations and digitally remove the actors from the scene, thereby “establishing” Howard’s incompetency (or insanity) to lead the company.

Does this sound different from our earlier synopsis? That’s because it is. The trailers established a heart-warming concept that was pulled right from under our feet at the onset.

I would’ve been fine with the deception if it were the only one. Sadly, they have a couple more up their sleeve. To muddle up the plot, Howard meets and eventually flirts with Madeline (Naomie Harris), a grief counselor who specializes in lost children. Once again, Collateral Beauty sucker punches you from behind. In the penultimate denouement, it’s revealed that Howard is suffering from self-induced amnesia and the grief counselor is actually his wife whom he separated from after their daughter’s death. What. Why.

If that isn’t exasperating enough, the movie’s final scene reveals that the actors who played Love, Time, and Death might actually be these abstract concepts after all.

Tiring plot twists aren’t Collateral Beauty’s only problem. It also suffers from too much metaphors. Howard’s story was hyperbolically filled with metaphors and symbolisms. Take it from a movie where characters are actually named Love, Time, and Death. Let’s not forget Collateral Beauty, though. The titular concept directly and conspicuously supplied by Howard’s forgotten wife. Basically, it’s the good karma that’s bound to happen after bad karma. Four concepts, four protagonists. Mix and match, ladies and gents. Howard has a hard time finding the Collateral Beauty. Whit is estranged from his daughter whom he still loves. Claire thinks she’s too old to start a family. Simon is afraid to tell his family about his terminal cancer. Wouldn’t you know it, that’s a perfect match!

Oh, and the dominoes? They’re a symbol for collateral beauty. Howard was so focused on building up his dominoes that he forgot that beauty can be found in watching them fall down, too.

Multitudes of plot twists and metaphor-hunting is fun, but it can be exasperating as well. Of course, giving your audience a little brain exercise is a great idea. Collateral Beauty could have been a great exercise in critical thinking, but instead it’s a roller coaster ride that toys with your expectations. Its attempt to draw on your heartstrings is only partially fulfilled because it spends too much time establishing its clever symbolisms and too little on plot development. While I don’t feel like I wasted my time, I felt Collateral Beauty would have made more sense either being studied in classrooms or played in theatrical productions.