Everybody loves a holiday movie once in a while. After a couple grueling weeks of finals and holiday shopping, it can be nice to curl up with a warm blanket and get lost in a simple, uncomplicated feel-good movie. Not saying there can’t be some elements that are sad; if that were the case then the British holiday staple Love Actually wouldn’t be as successful as it is. But the best kinds of holiday movies are supposed to use their simplicity to make the viewer’s insides all warm and fuzzy.
When sitting down to watch the star-studded holiday drama Collateral Beauty, I expected to leave the theater with a soft smile, pleasant thoughts and not a whole lot of complications. After all, the movie features Will Smith, Keira Knightley and Edward Norton, who quite frankly were the three reasons I went to see the film in the first place. How bad could it possibly be?
Bad, apparently. Very bad.
At first glance, the story’s plot seems pretty straightforward. Howard (Smith) is traumatized over the death of his young daughter. As a means to cope with his grief, Howard starts writing letters to Love, Time and Death, fully expecting to never receive a reply because, well, they’re figments of imagination rather than actual reality. Meanwhile Howard’s coworkers Whit (Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Pena) are worried Howard’s unresponsive state will cause their company to go under, scheming up a master plan to try and convince their voting board Howard is crazy instead of actually just confronting the man. To do this they hire three actors to inhabit the roles of Love (Knightley), Time (Jacob Latimore) and Death (Helen Mirren), forcing Howard to actually physically face the abstractions in his head.
And when I say the plot seems pretty straightforward, I mean in the sense that it’s way too familiar. After all, the whole ‘three spirits help change a struggling man’s life’ bit is almost a direct link to A Christmas Carol. And while taking inspiration from a different film is fine, there’s little in the movie you can point to and say, ‘Yes, that’s something that I’ve never seen before.’ The whole film seemed to be composed of worn-out clichés and feeble attempts at plot twists, neither of which stuck their respective landings.
Perhaps the basic plotline was why the acting struggled as well. With such a star-studded cast, it wouldn’t be crazy to assume that if all else fails, at least there will be some powerful performances. We should have learned from Valentine’s Day. Not a single cast member’s performance stood out as particularly note-worthy, although Smith did give it a good shot with his distant, tortured demeanor. I’m still hesitant to say it was entirely the casts’ fault though, because the majority of characters lacked the stable foundation needed for any sort of character development.
In short, what should have been a simple, feel-good holiday flick instead turned out to be a jumbled mess of confusion that leaves you sitting through the credits trying to piece everything together. As far as holiday movies go, better luck next year.
1/4 Shells
