Video essayist turned filmmaker Kogonada previously took us on beautiful journeys with his first two films, Columbus and After Yang. Those films were intimate and understated, but his latest, which bills itself as big and bold, is simply overbearing and vulgar. Adapting someone else's script (Seth Reiss) for the first time, Kogonada's third film might be a case of "one for them," of a filmmaker taking a job to keep active. Thematically it fits into Kogonada's wheelhouse, but A Big Bold Beautiful Journey has none of the emotional resonance of the director's previous work, despite all its "cry now" pummelling of the audience with shallow sentimentality.
The only good thing about the film is Colin Farrell, who commits himself fully to the half-baked role of David, a fortysomething singleton who rents a car from a mysterious Kafka-esque rental agency staffed by a disastrously unfunny Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Arriving at a wedding that appears to make him uncomfortable, David catches the eye of another guest, Sarah (Margot Robbie), and the two have an awkward flirtation in which David fails to read the signs. After the wedding David's car GPS asks him if he would like to go on the titular trip, and without blinking he agrees. This leads him back to Sarah, who has accepted a similar fate.
The shared journey leads David and Sarah to a series of doors, behind which are magical reconstructions of key moments of their past lives. David finds himself back in his high school on the fateful night when his teenage crush broke his heart while Sarah returns to the hospital on the day she learned her mother had passed away etc. To the people in these memory worlds, David and Sarah don't look like their current selves but rather as they appeared during those pivotal moments. Surprisingly, none of this is played for laughs, and it's the film's mawkish sincerity that proves its downfall (an adult Colin Farrell declaring his love to a 15-year-old should have been the point where the filmmakers realised things were going wrong).
For a fantasy film to work, we have to believe its world and its rules. The world of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey and its rules are so poorly conveyed that we never believe any of it. Its biggest issue is that we don't particularly care for David or Sarah. There's a shocking lack of chemistry between Farrell and Robbie, as though the actors had a falling out on the first day of shooting and couldn't stand each other's presence. Beyond their inescapable good looks, we never feel like David and Sarah have any genuine attraction. Farrell is his affable self but Robbie is badly miscast, playing Sarah with an ice maiden coldness. Watching David and Sarah relive formative moments from their lives is akin to being forced to look at a stranger's holiday snaps. We're not given the chance to get to know either of these people before they embark on their journey to the past, so nothing here has any emotional impact. It's like watching the second half of It's a Wonderful Life if you've never seen the first half of It's a Wonderful Life.
Directed by: Kogonada
Starring: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Kevin Kline, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lily Rabe, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Hamish Linklater
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