True to its title, “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is big and bold.
Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie embark on a journey through space and time, weaving in and out of their respective past and present lives, looking back on successes and failures with the gift of hindsight.
Farrell gets to perform again in his high school musical, trying to win the heart of his crush. Robbie has to rekindle her relationship with her mother just before and after she dies alone in the hospital.
That doesn’t exactly sound like a fair deal…
But this film is not beautiful. In fact, it’s quite ugly.
Not from a visual standpoint, though, as Director of Photography Benjamin Loeb effectively employs all the colors of the rainbow for the eye-popping production design by Katie Byron. (She worked on the equally vibrant “Don’t Worry Darling”). A bright red door beckons our leads down their first whimsical wormhole; blue and yellow umbrellas protect the soaked attendees of a wedding; and Farrell’s dark green cardigan blends well with the lush fields and trees. The only complaint I had was the sight of a Burger King being used as the meet-cute launch pad for this adventure.
However, my opinion about how nothing good ever comes from a Burger King remains true, as this treacly story makes a case for why we shouldn’t treat everyone’s life story as something special. I can only assume that writer Seth Reiss picked up one of those sappy self-help inspirational quote books and challenged himself to place each one into a script.
It worked for him, pulling in two A-listers and a major studio to fork over tens of millions of dollars to make those pieces of paper into a visual reality. But we’re the ones who have to pay a bigger price, and I’m not just talking about the $10 ticket price.
Despite their insanely good looks, David (Farrell) and Sarah (Robbie) have been single almost their entire lives. He’s too afraid of being heartbroken, a nearly 50-year-old man still being called by his parents about getting out there and meeting the right person. She’s afraid to break other people’s hearts, a serial cheater who would rather pull the ripcord than plunge deeper into commitment.
Both of them rent a car from the aptly titled “Car Rental Agency” run by a German-accented Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline. The GPS has a mind of its own, taking them on a detour towards a series of mysterious doors that serve as a portal into their memories.
You know the old saying: Once you’ve gone through one time-traveling door, you’ve been through them all. That’s certainly true here, with each of Farrell and Robbie’s stops offering the same sentimental lessons on life, death, and the opportunities that can only be seized by opening ourselves to risk.
Director Kogonada supplies a deft touch, but his humanistic instincts that were wonderfully displayed in his first features of “Columbus” and “After Yang” have been buried under the implicit studio requirement that everything stays neat and tidy. Seeing his name along with Joe Hisaishi as the credited composer made me even more depressed, as a more personal collaboration would likely yield amazing results.
My main takeaway from “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” was that the screening room in the new Bill Pohlad Cinema at the FilmNorth building more than lived up to its touted status as the most high-tech and pristine screening room in Minnesota. The images were sharp, the sound design was precise, and the 50-person seating capacity positively lent to an intimate atmosphere. It was unfortunate every time I refocused myself to watch the film projected in front of me was a reminder that not all movies enhance the theatrical experience.
Sony Pictures was scheduled to release “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” in theaters nationwide on September 19.
Eden Prairie resident Hunter Friesen is a film critic who owns and operates The Cinema Dispatch, a website where he writes reviews, essays, and more. He currently serves as president of the Minnesota Film Critics Association and travels the globe covering film festivals both big and small. To view his entire body of work, you can visit his website and Instagram.
