|
R
Starring
Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jennifer Grant
Director
Kogonada
Producer
Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas,
Genres
Drama
Released by
Sony Pictures on
9/19/2025
Nationwide
|
Trailer
Review
Watching A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, I found myself desperately wanting to like it. The leads, Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie, are photogenic and share just the right kind of chemistry. The romantic elements tread a fine line between solemnity and treacle. The screenplay, credited to Seth Reiss, tries to chart a different trajectory in place of traditional rom-com tropes. And Kogonada's direction crafts a variety of visually arresting - though not ostentatious - set pieces. Yet somehow, it doesn't all come together. The whimsical magic evident early on grows stale. The movie's tone is herky-jerky and never settles. And the ending feels undercooked and unearned.
This is not one of those journeys where the destination is irrelevant. In fact, without the final scene, it would feel incomplete and frustrating. Unfortunately, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey doesn't stick the landing. The final scene may work on a narrative level, but it feels emotionally off and - like too many traditional rom-coms - leaves the viewer cheated, with not enough meat on the bone. A longer, more meaningful ending would have gone a long way toward making the journey feel more consequential.
The film's conceit is that two strangers, David (Farrell) and Sarah (Robbie), who meet at a wedding, end up sharing a rental car equipped with a mystical GPS system that directs them to doors leading back to key moments in their pasts. This serves a dual purpose: it allows them to make peace with some of their foundational missteps while giving their companion a chance to peer into those hidden, personal moments.
At its best, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey feels a lot like one of those Charlie Kaufman/Spike Jonze or Kaufman/Michael Gondry dreamlike excursions (with Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Adaptation coming to mind). But the structure is ragged and undisciplined, and there's not nearly enough time for the characters to explore more than a handful of cherry-picked slices of life. The musical sequence in which David goes back to high school and stars in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a high point - lively and energetic, yet infused with an underlying melancholy. Later interludes, such as one in a hospital and another when the characters go "home," feel unconvincing, as if the story was scrambling for shortcuts to keep the running time under two hours.
Farrell and Robbie exude charm, and there's real pleasure in the scenes where they're simply allowed to spend time in each other's presence while accepting the unreality of their situation. But in trying to live up to all the adjectives in its title, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey never quite finds the right balance between the theatricality of its quasi-fantasy sequences and the harsher reality of two damaged people struggling to take a chance on love that neither is initially willing to consider.
The story has two gears: maudlin and quirky. It works far better when cruising in the latter than when downshifting into the former. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline (whom I wouldn't have recognized if I hadn't just seen him in Disclaimer) seem like they wandered into this movie on their way to something by Terry Gilliam. In the end, though, they function mainly as a combination plot device/comic relief. That's probably not a bad thing, but it highlights a core problem the film has with translating some of its offbeat ideas into something that gels.
While watching A Big Bold Beautiful Journey unfold, I was aware it wasn't working in many of the ways it intended, yet I still appreciated the risks it was willing to take. Reiss and Kogonada could easily have followed a conventional path, but their atypical choices give the film an edge and make it more interesting than it might otherwise be. Ultimately, though, the title reflects the film's aspirations more than its reality.
© 2025 James Berardinelli
|
|