“Did you lose a child, Howard?” There’s another film opening this fall (a good one) that deals with a similar situation, but the seeming difference in tone between that unnamed film and David Frankel‘s Collateral Beauty (New Line, 12.16) is quite marked. This thing feel so precious. The metaphor of the dominoes scares me. “You’ve been given a gift” gives me the willies. I began to mutter “uh-oh” less than 20 seconds in. We all know what a movie can feel like when Will Smith is playing a guy in pain. Remember Seven Pounds? Collateral Beauty feels like a close relation. I’ll tell you who’s in pain — costar Edward Norton. His face seems to say “I’m regretting this…I think I made a mistake.”
