A Big Bold Beautiful Journey can’t be faulted for being ambitious. It has a premise that seems formulaic, but its spin could be considered refreshing if it weren’t so decisively uneven and lacking a convincing emotional focus to make us care about its two central characters.
Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie star as David and Sarah who conveniently meet up with each other at a wedding. They believe they have nothing in common and part ways, but then they continue to show up in each other’s paths, more specifically at Burger King.
The two begin to talk and finally they decide to ride together and soon they’re on a journey (no pun intended) through a series of events where they get to relive certain moments of their pasts. This is where the film can divide into one of two tones: It can be either silly and over-the-top or excessively saccharine. In a lot of scenes, it wants to have its cake and eat it too.
One scene that proves inconsistent is when David get to relive a sequence where he meets his high school crush through a play they were in and the adult David goes back and forth by trying to be his teenage self interacting with the play and also being a fortuneteller by giving away the futures of his schoolmates. This sequence, with its musical numbers and the audience interacting with David, wants to be funny, but its execution is hilariously awkward.
With Robbie’s Sarah, she gets a chance to relive a moment with her mother and tries to have the quality time she believes they deserved. This sequence earns, I suppose, some points because the interaction between the mother and the daughter does feel authentic, but it can’t resist the temptation to be unabashedly sentimental.
A premise such as getting the chance to relive your past should be a lot more fun but A Big Bold Beautiful Journey wants the movie to be about second chances at a do-over but there’s no real ebb and flow to make it worthwhile.
Farrell and Robbie are sufficient enough in their roles but they can only elevate the material so far. The filmmakers can’t really decide which movie they want to make. Does it want to be charming and fantastical or grounded in some reality about the fates of its characters?
Not to mention, Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge who are puzzlingly miscast as owners of a car rental service. They provide David and Sarah with the car that takes them on their journey, and beyond that, they have no reason to be in the film beyond that point, but they are.
The movie was directed by a man who goes by Kogonada in the credits. I’m not sure if it’s his first or last name. Maybe it’s better that way for his sake.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey could have lived up to everything its title promised, but instead it settles for being merely a diversionary road trip.
