A Big Bold Beautiful Journey: Journey? Check. Big, Bold, Beautiful? Not So Much

By Chris Knight

Rating: C-

On my way to a screening of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, I googled the running time to figure out when I’d be home. Cursed Google told me it was a whopping two hours and 19 minutes. Well, I thought, there’s my lede: If nothing else, it’s big.

Turned out it was one hour and 48 minutes. So, neither big nor bold nor beautiful. Though I suppose it does count as a journey. Well, one out of four ain’t — no, wait, one out of four is terrible!

Colin Farrell stars as David. He’s fetchingly Irish, inscrutably single, and living in “the city,” which is presumably somewhere in America because his car speaks in miles and not kilometres.

He’s on his way to a wedding in “the country,” but his illegally parked car has a clamp on it. So, he rents a 1994 Saturn from a dodgy establishment run by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline, switching among accents as they talk.

It’s a delightfully weird scene, almost Pythonesque in its non-sequiturs and looniness. Alas, it’s also the best bit in the movie. And as I’ve since learned, there’s still almost an hour and three quarters of movie to traverse.

At the wedding, David meets fellow guest Sarah (Margot Robbie). She’s fetchingly Scottish Australian with a perfect American accent, and less inscrutably single because, as she’ll soon explain, she cheats on and/or leaves anyone to whom she gets close. She also lives in the city. They flirt.

If you’ve seen the ubiquitous trailers for this one, you’ll know they end up together on the road, visiting a series of mysterious doors that take them into the past. David returns to a lighthouse he once visited in Canada. Sarah goes to a museum she used to explore after hours thanks to a kindly security guard. They bring each other along for the ride.

But — why? Some viewers will be quick to shout “magic realism!” and leave it at that, but there seem to be no firm rules for these spatiotemporal jaunts. Sometimes our protagonists inhabit younger versions of themselves. Sometimes they inhabit younger versions of other selves, as when David finds himself reliving an episode in his life through the eyes of his father. Sometimes they just drop into history as anonymous observers.

Oh, and there’s one bit where they watch the Earth rise from — well, space I guess. It’s pretty, but I’m not going to call it beautiful.

The movie first got attention for appearing on the 2020 Black List, an annual survey of unproduced but promising screenplays that has produced its share of hits — The Wrestler, The Social Network, Looper — but also misses, such as Seven Pounds, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Kevin Smith’s Cop Out.

According to IndieWire, the original script by Seth Reiss came with two commas in the title (since excised) and a 1996 Volkswagen Passat rather than a 1994 GM Saturn as the vehicle of choice, but I’m not sure if those changes were what derailed its execution.

I’d blame the somewhat ham-fisted attempt at delivering “meaning” and “message” and “romance,” often in the same moment, and with little regard for the audience’s intelligence. I mean, check out the needle drop of “Let My Love Open the Door” at a crucial moment in the story. And not the Pete Townshend original but a cover! That’s hardly a bold musical choice.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is the latest from U.S. director Kogonada. He has worked with Farrell before, in the fantastic and little-seen 2021 science-fiction drama After Yang. Walk through that movie’s door for a quiet, demure, exquisite experience. Leave this one closed.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Directed by Kogonada. Starring Colin Farrell, and Margot Robbie. In theatres September 19.