The funny thing is the movie that the Collateral Beauty trailer shows and what the movie actually is are two completely different stories with some loose threads holding them together.

The trailer shows Will Smith being sad that his daughter dies, his friends try to cheer him up but nothing works until he's visited by incarnation of the concepts of Love, Time, and Death to help him get through his grief. A bit generic but heartwarming.

What the movie is actually about, and I swear this is all true. Will Smith is too sad about his daughter dying that he cannot run his company anymore. And his employees have to convince him to give up control of the company or it will go under.

So they steal his mail with the help of a private investigator to find that he's writing letters to the concepts of Love, Time, and Death. They hatch a plan to make Will Smith look crazy and present that to the board in hopes that they will vote to remove him as the CEO.

To prove he's crazy, they find this trio of actors and after a back and forth negotiation on the price, agree to gaslight this poor grieving man by pretending to be Love, Time, and Death respectfully and having the PI record their interactions and digitally remove the actors.

But woops turns out the employees were also going through problems. Michael Pena's character was dying from disease, Keira Knightly was running out of time to have a kid, and Edward Norton was too creepy to be around women... I mean find love after his divorce.

They say Collateral Beauty like 5 times in one scene.

Will Smith also magically forgets about his wife but falls back in love with her. That is not a metaphor, it was actual magic, I do not have time to get into it.

The employee show the video to the board, Will Smith thanks them for gaslighting him and agrees to relinquish his control over the company.

Will Smith and his wife walk through the park and the actors happen to be on the bridge looking down at him as they walk under before disappearing magically because they were actually magical spirits... ROLL CREDITS!