Sunday, December 18, 2016

Collateral Beauty of advertisement

This will be a review slightly different than usual because this movie requires a different approach. Looking at the trailer, the plot seems to be the following. Will Smith's child died and he is very depressed. His friends are worried about him, especially when they find out that he is writing letters to Love, Time and Death. Suddenly, those three abstractions start to answer him back.

Therefore I was not expecting much because the risk of cheap philosophy is two scenes away at any given time. I was secretly hoping that Love, Time and Death were just actors hired by his worried friends to make him come back to a normal life.

Now the real plot (not a spoiler, it is revealed in the first 20 minutes).

Synopsys: Will Smith is a creative and charismatic man, whose life is upset by the death of his 6 years old daughter. His friends are also his co-workers and they are very worried that his depression will make their company fail. Thus they decide to hire actors in order to drive him crazy, film everything, show him the tape in front of the board and push him to resign from the company he founded. 

Yes, people, this is the shitty plot about shitty people. The movie is structured to make you cry for the grieving father, but it is telling such a meaningless act of evil that everything is in the background of the selfishness of a bunch of assholes. The feeling is that there was a good movie somewhere in there, but something went horribly wrong once the final product was made. Then I imagine the conversation went in a similar way.

Aren't we telling the story of how three assholes kicked their friend out of the company because he was sad and he was making everyone sad?

Good point, Harold, let's advertise it as a movie about the importance of accepting the grief, the importance of love and how beautiful is having a friend that cares about you.


Well, can't we simply change the motivat...

Sorry, Harold, I can't hear you: all these lambs make a hell of a noise while I smash their head with this baby seal.


So far it is just a bad movie with great actors and performances. They go even further and introduce three subplots involving the three worst friends in the history of filmmaking. Probably the message is that everyone has some problem and you should empathize with them too. First, their problem is that they are assholes. Second, the result is not emotional at all. The only one that empathizes with them is Will Smith, the victim of their plot, that is eventually revealing them that, although his grief is heavy on him, he feels their problems. Here the villains have the chance to redeem themselves and tell the truth, give balance to Will Smith's life again, but no, they cry a little, the go drinking, they steal the company.

As an extra point, there is even a fourth subplot involving the main character and, without anticipating anything, it makes no sense at all. It is clearly an attempt to give some kind of deepness to the movie by adding some obscure twist just to make the viewer guess about it. There is nothing to guess: it is a cheap move to force us to get emotional about the finale. It is in this subplot that the movie explores the meaning of its title: 32 seconds, a monologue by a secondary character, defined bullshit by the main one. That's it.

In conclusion, a very bad movie that loses the occasion of having on screen a lot of good actors by making them be horrible people and then trying to be profound simply by taking out any sense from the plot. It is a pity: a few dialogues about death are free of the usual rhetoric and the potential for a movie to be remembered was there. 

Do not spend your money on it: they will use that money to kill more lambs using baby seals as a weapon.

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