A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is neither big nor bold, but it is (kind of) beautiful
Courtesy Sony Pictures
I’m not going to be trite and say there are two kinds of people in this world; there are many kinds of people in this world, obviously. Many of them are lovely. An increasingly terrifying number of them suck. For the purposes of this review, however, we’re going to sort humanity into two camps: people who like concept-heavy inspirational stories that serve as a metaphor for life (the ones who made Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library a bestseller) and people who don’t (people like me, who read The Midnight Library for a book club, and would otherwise never have picked it up).
How you respond to A Big Bold Beautiful Journey may align with which camp you fall into. Like other stories of its ilk, the Kogonada-directed, Seth Reiss-scripted romantic drama is light on character, and smooths out the details so the story feels more archetypal than relatable. This is the kind of movie where our two romantic leads — Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie — are introduced at a wedding by a mutual friend because they live in the same city, but said city is never actually named. It’s like if you passed one of those aforementioned stories through a Simon Rich filter: deeply, goofily sincere, but funnier than you’d expect.
Farrell’s David is leaving for an out-of-town wedding, but his car is out of commission. Thankfully, there’s a totally-not-sketchy-at-all flier taped to a nearby building for a car rental agency (its name is literally just that). David picks up his Saturn from the two agents — Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, poorly faking a German accent for reasons never explained (whimsy!) — and goes on his way, helped by the agency-installed GPS.
At the wedding, David meets Robbie’s Sarah. Sparks fly, but they’re both too wrapped up in their own insecurities to make a move. Fortunately, as they go their separate ways, the GPS does that for them, leading them through a series of magical doors that take them through each other’s memories and force David and Sarah to confront the personal factors that have been keeping each of them lonely for so long.
Most of what works best about A Big Bold Beautiful Journey comes from Kogonada’s visual panache and the two performances at the center. The film’s natural landscapes are gorgeous and meditative, with curving fields, glowing leaves and ever-present mountains in the background. Farrell and Robbie both manage to inject their characters with enough personality that they feel like real people, not just ciphers — even as Robbie gets saddled with a wardrobe that screams “free spirit,” and Farrell has few distinguishing characteristics outside his Irish accent.
Despite all these pitfalls, there are parts of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey that are genuinely affecting. As much as the movie is really a pile of sentiment wrapped up in some nice cinematography, there are themes about pursuing happiness over contentment, grief and disappointment that do contain some striking universal truths. Or, maybe, at the end of the day, it’s just nice to watch two insanely attractive, professionally-lit people fall in love and make out. You get out of the experience what you bring to it.
Courtesy Columbia Pictures
