Death, love -- and a waste of time

A strong cast can't make anything credible out of weepy Collateral Beauty.

Burdened by a whopping contrivance, Collateral Beauty -- a movie that wants to talk about unbearable grief and the need for human connection -- resembles a luxury passenger liner that sinks soon after leaving the dock.

The luxury reference has to do with the presence of an A-list cast featuring Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Helen Mirren and Keira Knightley. They're all fine actors, but Collateral Beauty blows the opportunity for great ensemble work by putting the cast into one credibility-challenging or maudlin scene after another.

The story might be viewed as a fable grounded in what may have been intended as a plausible reality, the world of New York advertising.

Smith plays Howard, a hot-shot advertising executive who loses his six-year-old daughter to a rare form of cancer. Mired in grief, Howard completely shuts down. Not surprisingly, his near-catatonic state threatens the life of the agency he founded with his partner (Norton).

The plot's big twist arrives when Norton and two of his colleagues (Winslet and Michael Pena) decide to hire a trio of actors (Mirren, Knightley and Jacob Latimore) to visit the dejected Howard as the embodiment of three abstractions: Death, Love and Time.

Why Death, Love and Time? In the movie's prologue, Howard tells his staff that these are the vital ingredients in selling products. Moreover, since the death of his daughter, Howard has been writing and mailing letters addressed to Death, Love and Time. The letters give voice to Howard's anger at the way all three have betrayed him.

Howard's colleagues have two objectives: They want to save Howard from his depression, and they also want to have him declared incompetent. They'll then be able to sell the company, of which Howard is the majority owner, to an eager buyer.

To achieve their goal, this trio of ad execs also hires a private investigator (Ann Dowd) to photograph Howard talking to Death, Love and Time; the execs then will have these figures digitally removed so that it looks as if Howard is ranting to himself.

When it's not focusing on Howard, the movie doles out other forms of pain. Winslet's character wonders whether she hasn't sacrificed the chance to have a family by spending too much time at the office. Pena's character deals with a recurrence of a long-dormant cancer, and Norton's Whit worries about fixing the screwed-up relationship he has with his young daughter. She won't talk to him because he cheated on her mom.

Putting all of these fine actors into one movie must have seemed like a casting bonanza to director David Frankel (Hope Springs and The Devil Wears Prada). Too bad Allan Loeb's screenplay doesn't play to the cast's strengths: It falls to young Latimore to give the movie's most (and perhaps only) compelling performance.

If all of these actors weren't enough, the movie adds Naomi Harris as a woman who leads a group of parents who've lost children.

The drama comes to a head on Christmas Eve making Collateral Beauty an offering for the season that's intended to mix laughs, tears and greeting card wisdom. Who knows? It might have worked had Frank Capra tried it during the 1930s.

Today, Collateral Damage looks precisely like what it is: a concept that never develops into a real or convincing movie.

Should this marriage be saved?

Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep are unhappy together as a long-time husband and wife in Hope Springs.
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Hope Springs deals with a marriage that's foundering. I've seen the movie referred to as a "dramady," which means it's supposed to blend comedy and drama. I guess that's a fair description, but I wouldn't call Hope Springs great drama or sharp-edged comedy. Mostly, the movie stands out for being an adult-oriented movie that arrives in the middle of a comic-book summer and for being willing to show aging characters talking -- albeit awkwardly -- about sex.

Nothing dramatic happens to bring this marriage to the brink, which is more or less the point. Hope Springs has more to do with the deadening accrual of habit than with rash infidelities or Virginia Woolf-style knock-down drag-outs.

Initially, I wondered whether Tommy Lee Jones, an actor who can seem as angry as a clenched fist, would team well with Meryl Streep, an actress who excels at both drama and comedy. I'm not sure I ever bought them as a couple, but I watched with interest as they worked over material that vacillates between compelling and second-rate.

Here's the drill: Kay (Streep) and Arnold (Jones) have been married for 31 years. Five years before we meet them, Arnold hurt his back and began sleeping in the guest room. He never returned to the bedroom he and Kay once shared. Arnold's an accountant. Kay works in a clothing store. And if you happened to meet them in real life, you'd probably think they were as happy as most other couples in Omaha, which is where they live.

Kay knows differently. She's not content, even if Arnold is comfortable in the rut he's dug for himself. He goes to the office. He comes home. He eats dinner. He falls asleep in front of the TV while watching the golf channel.

In a bold move, Kay enrolls in a $4,000 intensive marriage counseling session in Maine. These sessions are conducted by Bernie Feld (Steve Carell), a psychologist who has written a best-selling book called You Can Have the Marriage You Want, the title of which pretty much explains what it's about.

Predictably, Arnold has no interest in therapy. When he realizes that he either must accompany Kay to Maine or give up on his marriage, he boards a plane -- not that he quits complaining. Counseling won't do any good. The psychologist's a fraud. The whole thing costs too much.

I've got two views about Hope Springs, which was written by Vanessa Taylor and directed by David Frankel, who also directed Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. There's an undeniable element of daring here, particularly in the therapy scenes, which -- in fairly short order -- address Kay and Arnold's badly depleted sex life.

At its best, the movie plays like a less taxing version HBO's In Treatment, and I half wondered why Carell had usurped Gabriel Byrne's role as one of entertainment's more credible shrinks.

To the movie's credit, therapy isn't shown as an instant cure-all. For Arnold and Kay, therapy is full of bumps, detours, bruised feelings and anger.

Carell plays his role straight in a movie that finds its best moments in his character's office. Frankel's few attempts to open things up can seem superfluous. An example: Kay visits a local bar where she encounters a sympathetic bar tender (Elizabeth Shue).

I said I was of two minds about Hope Springs. Here's the second. I found it almost impossible not to be a little too aware of the acting. Jones gives Arnold the hunched posture of a man who's pushing through life. Arnold's running on residues of resolve and lowered expectations. Streep finds Kay's weariness, her yearning and also her tendency to be a little clueless at times.

The supposedly "humorous" parts of the movie aren't all that funny, although the trailer seems designed to persuade us that Hope Springs is a comedy.

So what am I saying? Although parts of Hope Springs are commendable, I didn't totally buy Taylor and Frankel's exploration of the calcifications that can be wrought by age, habit and lack of imagination. I wish the movie had been a little tougher.

So I'll split the difference. Yes, it's refreshing to see a movie that deals with adult themes. But Arnold and Kay's troubled marriage finds itself in the middle of a movie that seems to want to explore real issues, but -- in the end -- doesn't want to ruffle too many feathers, even those belonging to Arnold and Kay.