Director Kogonada (After Yang) and screenwriter Seth Reiss (The Menu) ask a lot of their audience with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. It’s a hopeful romance of sorts that intends to utilise its magical realism to sweep viewers away into its odyssey of fantastical nature, with the added bonus of proven charm inhabitants Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie leading the charge as a duo of lost souls who need the titular journey in order to find their meaning in life. It’s a big swing of a movie, and had it landed it could have truly proven something special.
Unfortunately, as big and as bold and as beautiful as it wants to be, it’s unable to escape a sense of pretentiousness and its own ambition, buckling under the weight of itself, with Farrell and Robbie shockingly unable to provide enough heavy lifting to get this to its destination in any type of smooth manner.
The journey itself begins when David (Farrell) sets off to the country for a friend’s wedding, only to find his vehicle has been clamped on the street. Turning to a car rental company overseen by a bizarre duo (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the latter astonishingly bad as she derails proceedings almost immediately with a bizarre German accent and honing the notion that unnecessary profanity is a substitute for comedy), he hires a car fit with a specific GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) that proves to be far more important than originally suspected. At the wedding he connects with Sarah (Robbie), who, through exaggerated, unsubtle dialogue, lets us in on the fact that she’s a messy human (to say the least), someone who runs from love and intimacy in spite of needing such.
Because they’re both in need of a spiritual reset, the GPS takes it upon itself to guide David and Sarah to the same destination – a roadside burger joint – and, without ever questioning just what is taking place, brings them together for “a big bold beautiful journey” that will see them revisit pivotal moments throughout their life. What it all means I honestly couldn’t say, but it presumably is meant to be profound enough for both David and Sarah in their current selves to reflect on their feelings and move forward with less of a sense of doubt and more a trust in the other; Farrell and Robbie are fine together, but their chemistry makes them feel more like good friends than romantic partners, and coupled with such unnatural dialogue, the film asks too much in us believing this journey is worth it for their eventual partnership.
Through singular standing doors in the middle of rogue land spaces, David and Sarah enter into their own universes, stepping into a moment of their history that they are seemingly meant to learn from. For David it’s a visit to his own boyhood and the school musical that provided the backdrop for his first heartbreak. For Sarah, the remnants of her deceased mother (Lily Rabe), and facing the relationship that could have been had she not pursued her own personal pleasures.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is so desperately trying to be emotionally relevant, with its lyrical waxing on relationships and life philosophies ultimately too poetic to break through. As removed from reality the film is, in order for it to resonate it needs a grounded centre, and Kogonada and Reiss are too hung up on the aesthetics to think about the substance underneath its own style. There’s no denying that the film looks quite lush, and it offers up minor moments of enjoyment (there’s a musical sequence that truly makes me wish we get Farrell and Robbie in a full blown musical at some point), but it’s never enough to justify why we should witness a journey that, from the off, never feels like it’s going to lead anywhere of note; Sarah constantly reminds David that she’s not a good partner, having cheated on all her former beaus, that the case for them being a couple is never one strong enough to believe in.
Ultimately a film unsure of itself in most aspects, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a splendid idea of a movie that comes undone in its execution. There’s a vulnerability needed here in order for David and Sarah’s plight to resound that never comes, and, as hard as they try, Farrell and Robbie appear too lost in the broad metaphorical nature of it all. Sadly, this is one journey not worth taking.
TWO STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is now screening in Australian theatres, before opening in the United States on September 19th, 2025.
