A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

by Mike McGranaghan

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is the absolute weirdest major studio release I’ve seen in a very long time. I will do my best to describe the weirdness, but words might not be able to do it justice.

The story begins with David (Colin Farrell) heading out to a wedding, only to discover his car won’t work. Coincidentally, there’s a flyer on the side of a building that advertises an emergency car rental service. He goes to the place, which defines suspiciousness because it’s basically just a big open space with two weird employees (Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline) and a whopping two cars. David takes one, gets to the wedding, and meets Sarah (Margot Robbie), a stranger who proposes marriage immediately after telling him how badly she hurts the men she dates.

On the way home, his GPS asks him if he wants to go on “a big bold beautiful adventure.” He responds in the affirmative, so the GPS guides him to a Burger King where he runs into Sarah again. Her car won’t start. He offers her a ride. Together, they are guided by the car to a series of remote locations where mysterious doors sit right out in the open. Each one they go through transports them to a different period of their lives. He’s suddenly a teenager again, lamenting the rejection by his high school crush (but not before a painfully protracted stage production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying). She ends up in a favorite museum from her childhood.

You might have some reasonable questions at this point. How do the doors work? Who put them there? How do David and Sarah feel about this magical ability to move through time? Why are they sometimes in a real location and other times on what appears to be a stage? How did the car rental people and the GPS know where to take them? Rest assured, not a single one of these questions will be answered by the film.

Fantasy stories of this sort require a contract with the audience. We’re willing to suspend disbelief as long as there’s some sort of establishment of the rules. We’re supposed to witness the characters put into an improbable scenario, acknowledge the strangeness of it, and figure out how to maneuver around accordingly. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which this movie attempts to be in the same ballpark as, did that extremely well. Here, though, David and Sarah never question anything, nor do they ever receive any explanation. They merely wander from door to door, blindly accepting that each one will result in a painful personal revelation.

The gist of the plot is that the characters are romantically perfect for each other yet too individually damaged to recognize it. Only by going through the doors are they able to confront the parts of themselves that need healing if the romance is ever going to take seed. The screenplay by Seth Reiss (The Menu) is too superficial to make that concept viable. Instead of actual depth, we’re treated to a series of excessively schmaltzy scenes that do little to define David and Sarah in any sort of meaningful way. We know they’re damaged because they keep talking about how damaged they are.

The irony is that Farrell and Robbie are working hard. Both give performances full of sincerity and emotion. But rather than elevating the picture, their strong turns only serve as a reminder of how badly contrived the whole story really is. Their wholehearted commitment is in service of a premise that leaves them stranded in a sea of absurdity. All the emoting in the world doesn’t make the sappy tale suddenly profound.

A Big Bold Journey was directed by Kogonada, a very interesting filmmaker whose previous efforts were the acclaimed Columbus and After Yang. You can’t deny the ambitious intent, especially in the visual department. Despite the clear attempt to produce something out of the norm, this is still a big bland boring journey.

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