Welcome back, crazy Christmas season movie fare! You are insane and this particular offering looks so bananas I wonder if it might actually be great.
Collateral Beauty’s trailer seems to be the result of someone coming up with a title, then working backwards, but look at this cast: Will Smith, Ed Norton, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, and Helen Fucking Mirren as DEATH. Smith plays a dad who seems to have lost his little girl. Sad. Luckily, he is able to work through his grief with the tortured metaphor of building cascading domino sets and writing letters to Love, Time, and Death then actually mailing them.
Through entirely too much exposition for a two and a half minute trailer, we learn that Smith’s character is a “brilliant, creative, charismatic guy who used to love life” but now “he hates it.” It’s also clearly established that his letters aren’t crazy. Kids write to Santa, don’t they? DON’T THEY? MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Before long, Smith is being visited by the human personifications of these abstract concepts, who all seem very emotional about one man’s lack of…faith? An organized routine? What? Either way, I think we’re all just a bunch of dominoes who will get knocked back in our seats with knowledge this December.
Some great quotes:
- “I’m time and I’m a gift and you’re wasting it.”
- “I saw you in her eyes when she called me daddy, and you betrayed me!”
- “I’m the reason for everything. If you can accept that then maybe you’ll get to live again.”
- “There’s more at stake here than you even understand.”
- “Collateral Beauty will be released by Warner Bros. on December 16, 2016 alongside Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”
