A Big Bold Beautiful Journey Movie Review

The beginning of the movie made me shiver with delight. I just knew I was in for something special. ​

Colin Farrell’s David walks out his door to find that his car has a boot on it. He has to get to a wedding, so he’s forced to go to a or the Car Rental Agency. An ad conveniently in his line of vision tells him this. It’s an incredibly bizarre situation all around when he meets the people who run the agency. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline play these characters that will leave you raising an eyebrow or two.

High-pressure sales techniques put him into an old Saturn with GPS, and off he goes. The GPS tells him more than just where to drive, but also asks, “Does he want to take a Big, Bold Beautiful Journey?” Who would say no to your GPS out of the blue, asking questions like that? This meeting is a setup for David’s meet-cute with Sarah (Robbie). Depending on your sense of humor, you may become as giddy as I did, based on the opening scenes. The acting and the oddness of it all were what I thought I’d continue to get, but didn’t. The delivery of every word spoken by the character played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge was abnormally flawless and worth the price of admission. Still, she wasn’t in the movie nearly enough.

David and Sarah both find that they’re in rented Saturns and meet up at the same place. They are directed to embark on a journey together and find themselves in the woods, led to a door that they somehow muster the courage to go through. Me? Too frightening, but they did meet Waller-Bridge, and if she didn’t scare them off, this journey is for them and not me.

On the journey, they encounter many doors, each reminding them of a moment in the past and then transporting them to that exact moment, giving them a chance to change who they become in the future. That is, if they find a reason within themselves to want that change. Hint, they need to.

The journey is that they somehow navigate through the most pivotal moments in their lives, aware of the mistakes they made and that fixing them is necessary to repair the lives they live now. Will they see that reshaping the future means loving bigger, living better, and being better people? Is it ultimately within them to be these other people? They fight it, so perhaps, when we’re born, we are set on the course of the “us” or the “we” no matter the track we are able to jump upon later. You’ll see if they’re capable of change, however slight.

What’s wrong with this film? A romance is attempted, but there is nothing between Farrell and Robbie to get it going. The age difference doesn’t help. I know the younger woman thing is all over the place and accepted, but you really notice it here. You expect her to say, “Dad,” at any moment. The vagueness, done for dramatic sake, does this movie and its timing no favors. It drags. They both whine all the time. A positive is that her mother gives her the advice to choose happiness in being content. David has a conversation with his father right after he’s born, and the conversation couldn’t be duller, teaching him nothing. So, the point is?

The places the characters find themselves, the timelines, the people they encounter, not to mention the cinematography that accompanies those scenes, make “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” worth watching at the theater. However, it’s too deep, dark, and depressing for such a commitment. The beauty that is here seems to have been purposely hidden by poor decisions throughout, so I’m suggesting a streaming watch. If where they met was a “Soul Mate” service, as David inquires about at the end of the film, director Kogonada and writer Seth Reiss could have done a much better job of letting the audience in on that sooner.

Are they on a giant date that sets them on a course together for the greater good of mankind? Are they fixing the past for a specific reason for someone in their lives? A rhetorical question, of course. Hopefully, you’ll discover the answers within yourself while watching the impressive staging you can’t ignore.