‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ Feels Like A Fake Movie

If there’s one thing A Big Bold Beautiful Journey does right, it’s the fact that it provides irrefutable evidence that hiring two exceptional actors and a promising director won’t automatically make a good movie if the initial idea is flawed. Its surreal take on the romance movie has all the elements of a great film, but strange chemistry between its two leads and a truly shocking inertness makes it a real chore to endure.

The setup isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel: David (Colin Farrell) and Sarah (Margot Robbie) are two lonely souls staring down middle age when they meet at a wedding. They don’t hit it off immediately, but when their strange rental cars independently ask them if they’d like to go on a big, bold, beautiful journey, the two accept. Said journey involves visiting metaphysical manifestations of their past, all while finding out more about one another.

The surrealist leaning of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is its most interesting aspect, at least in theory. Director Kogonada, known for acclaimed films like Columbus and After Yang, creates a film with a genuinely beautiful aesthetic that earnestly feels like a memory. Where the rest of the movie fails (and it often does), it’s often made up for with Kogonada’s clear eye for visual language.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey constantly squanders its potential

Sadly, that’s about the extent of the filmmaking prowess on display throughout A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Besides its sumptuous visual style, it’s a product with practically no life behind its eyes as it trudges towards its ending as if led by the movie’s own strange, magical GPS.

Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie are some of the best actors currently working, but their collaboration here is far less fruitful than one may expect. The film is written and directed in a way that makes a feeling of authentic connection impossible, as each actor makes the choice to sluggishly play their roles as if it were fated to happen. making their characters feel like they’re talking with one another out of obligation rather than desire.

That results in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’s worst crime – it feels like it lasts forever. It has the vibes of a movie destined to be shown on a free-to-air channel that you might catch twenty minutes of and think to yourself “Wow, that doesn’t feel like a real movie,” and you shut it off out of boredom after 20 minutes or so… Except I couldn’t switch it off, and its trite repetitive musings on love made this particular journey feel like an eternity. It may not be beautiful or that bold, but it sure is big.

There are moments where the characters of David and Sarah are dangerously close to doing something interesting throughout. However, it’s just not enough to save A Big Bold Beautiful Journey from its fate as a truly confounding misfire that is only particularly good at squandering its own potential.

★½

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is in cinemas now.