IRS agent Ben Thomas (Will Smith) changes the lives of seven strangers in Gabriele Muccino's thriller Seven Pounds. (Sony Pictures Entertainment)

If the vague, quantitative title isn’t enough of a tip-off, the convoluted plot machinations, agitated camerawork and numerous time shifts make it clear: Seven Pounds desperately wants to be a “serious” movie in the vein of Alejandro González Iñnáritu’s gorgeous downer 21 Grams (2003).

While his charisma and boyish grin normally generate oodles of audience goodwill, Will Smith seems stymied by Seven Pounds, which forces him to dial his charm down.

Perhaps I’m being unfair, since Seven Pounds isn’t entirely derivative. It’s bad in its own unique way, and features one amazing scene in which Barry Pepper, doing his best Al Pacino, shouts so loud that tears and spittle actually spring forth and land on his chin. It also has a key plot development involving a jellyfish, and enough rapid-fire focus adjustments to rival any scene from The Young and the Restless. Best of all, Seven Pounds features lines of dialogue like, “I’ve always believed this place could heal the soul” and “You can’t keep playing with people’s lives!”

The character who shouts that last line might have a point, because playing with people’s lives is what Seven Pounds is all about. When the movie begins, we meet Ben Thomas (Will Smith), a distraught IRS agent who is placing a 911 call. From there, we circle backwards in time to find out how Ben ended up in a dreary motel room with phone in hand.

The movie is haunted by a dark episode in Ben’s past. Though the film offers a hint of what happened via numerous intrusive, unnecessary flashbacks, the only thing that’s certain is that he once had a wife named Sarah, who is now noticeably absent from his high-gloss beach house.

Wracked with guilt over the Mysterious Event, Ben spends his nights sleeping on the couch, and his days paying visits to various strangers he’s investigating for the IRS. They’re all in dire financial straits — though curiously, they appear able to afford tasteful drapes and votive candles straight out of a Martha Stewart catalogue. As Ben begins to interview these people, it becomes clear he’s collecting more than just financial information. He probes them with invasive questions about how they conduct their daily lives, and evaluates them on moral grounds, making self-righteous decisions about which person is good enough to be the beneficiary of his unique (though undisclosed) generosity.

Seven Pounds falls prey to the trap — so common in Oscar-hungry projects of this nature — of equating suffering with goodness. The cast of characters Ben encounters is an exceptionally pitiful lot: a hockey coach on dialysis, a battered woman, a blind pianist named Ezra (Woody Harrelson, sporting a distracting pair of wonky-coloured contacts), a hospital administrator in need of some bone marrow, and Emily (Rosario Dawson), who suffers from a (cough!) congenital heart disease.

Ben falls in love with Emily (Rosario Dawson), who is terminally ill, in Seven Pounds. (Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Emily is among those who fulfill Ben’s questionable criteria for goodness, and so he decides to cut her some slack on her taxes. The two embark on a slow, budding romance and damned if their lovey-dovey scenes aren’t the liveliest thing in Seven Pounds. This is not exactly high praise, since so much of the movie — from its grey colour palette to its frequent scenes of characters hooked up to tubes and monitors in hospital beds — seems drained of life. Dawson, who has a pretty solid B.S. detector operating throughout the movie, manages to make even her most leaden dialogue seem like it’s coming from an authentic place; some of her reactions are so fresh and funny, I found myself missing her every time she wasn’t onscreen.

Then there’s Will Smith. While his charisma and boyish grin normally generate oodles of audience goodwill, he seems stymied by Seven Pounds, which forces him to dial his charm down until he conveys all the personality of a wet sock. He strains so hard to be serious (clenching his jaw; thrusting his mouth out in a stiff, child’s pout) that he registers one note: pained. Ben comes across more as a creepy android than an anguished, repentant human.

Smith has good reason to look so miserable. This movie, which reunites the star with The Pursuit of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino, might be dressed up with arty camera work, swanky production design and a name cast, but it’s still sentimental hooey of the first order. Thanks to a ludicrous script by Grant Nieporte, it has the Chicken Soup for the Soul smarminess of Pay It Forward.

As Ben roams around L.A., trying to determine who’s deserving of his good will, he dispenses lots of unsolicited advice, as in the scene where he says to the battered woman: “Do not be weak!” Later, he says: “All I ask is for you to honour my wishes and of course live life abundantly!” With platitudes like these, it’s no wonder Oprah has endorsed the movie.

By the time Seven Pounds lurches towards its big twist ending — spoiled well in advance by shoddy editing of some of the flashbacks — any hope for logic or a genuine emotion is long gone. Though designed to jerk tears from the audience, the film’s denouement is more likely to leave viewers craving some life support of their own.

Seven Pounds opens Dec. 19.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.