‘Collateral Beauty’ Review Roundup: Why Critics Are Slamming Will Smith’s New Movie

To find the last Will Smith film that was a success with critics, one has to go back nine years to the 2007 release of “I Am Legend.” Following that film’s release, Smith’s other titles, such as “Hancock,” “After Earth” and “Suicide Squad,” have all be met with negative reviews.

Unfortunately for Smith, his latest film, “Collateral Beauty,” does not stop the trend. Releasing Friday, the film currently holds a 13 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is on its way to becoming the worst-reviewed film of 2016.

The film’s all-star cast, which includes Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton and Keira Knightley, can’t save the movie from what the David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter calls “silly high-concept Hollywood grief porn.”

While the film features a great cast, the problem, according to Owen Gleiberman of Variety, doesn’t lie in the actors. “It’s the movie itself, which keeps piling on the devices until it becomes top-heavy,” he wrote. Gleiberman went on to say the film’s emotion is engineered and “pushes the gimmickry further.”

In a one-star review from The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw did not mince words, writing, “At the end of it, I screamed the way polar bears are supposed to when they get their tongues frozen to the ice.” Bradshaw called the film a “horrifyingly yucky, toxically cutesy ensemble dramedy” and said the ending would be rejected by director M. Night Shyamalan for being too ridiculous.

Stephen Whitty of the New York Daily News praises Smith’s overall acting skills but question’s the actor’s recent film choices. “Oh, hell yes, as Smith — a good actor with sometimes terrible, oh-so-serious taste — fully commits to a sticky, icky morality tale and gets other, even better actors to sign on,” wrote Whitty, adding, “They’re the real ‘Collateral’ casualties.”

Alan Scherstuhl of the Village Voice was less forgiving of Smith’s acting, calling the actor “really convincing as someone who doesn’t want to be there.” Scherstuhl tore the film’s plot apart, writing, “You’ll... struggle to accept that what you saw on that screen actually played in theaters, was funded and approved by distributors, took a month or so of the lives of those extraordinary actors.”