Like I said in my article Saturday counting down my most anticipated films of this fall/winter a trailer could drop any time for the Will Smith-starrer Collateral Beauty, but for some reason I felt the film, directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me), would be delayed given it was supposed to arrive this Christmas and we'd yet to even see a production still from the picture. My train of thought went in this direction because it is what happened to Frankel's 2011 film, The Big Year, that carried the weight of names like Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin in the same movie together. That movie came and went without so much as a peep. I was hopeful Frankel's latest venture wouldn't be of the same variety given, aside from Smith, it has a cast to die for despite coming from prolific if not exceptional screenwriter Alan Loeb (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Just Go With It). That all changed today as the teaser for Collateral Beauty has arrived and the film looks to pull at the heart strings as it it tells the story of a man (Smith) who experiences a tragic event that sends him into a downwards spiral-causing him to examine life and the things that connect each of us-our longing for love, our constant wish for more time, and our fear of death. The debut trailer tells us Smith's Howard Inlet begins writing letters to these things-to the universe-as a therapeutic way of dealing with this tragedy. What he doesn't expect is a response and yet he gets some in the form of Helen Mirren, Jacob Latimore, and Keira Knightley. Though the music hits you a bit over the head this certainly looks as if it will hit the strong emotional beats that Frankel was able to do in his "Why People Love Dogs" story that had every theater it was shown in in tears. I don't know that we'll necessarily see the film in contention come awards season, but this looks like a genuinely great movie to see with the family during the holidays and hopefully Frankel and his A-list cast can convey all the ideas and emotions this trailer sets up in interesting and powerful fashions in the final product. Collateral Beauty also stars Edward Norton, Michael Pena, Naomie Harris, Kate Winslet and opens on December 16, 2016.
Synopsis: When a successful New York ad executive suffers a personal tragedy and retreats from life, his friends devise a drastic plan to reach him before he loses everything. Pushing him to the very edge, they force him to confront the truth in surprising and profoundly human ways. From Oscar-winning director David Frankel, this thought-provoking drama explores how even the deepest loss can reveal moments of beauty, and how the constants of love, time and death interlock in a life fully lived.
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