A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025)
Whimsy and magical realism can be tricky to convey on screen. If it succeeds, it can be a delight, but if it fails, it can be a disaster. Director Kogonada's new romantic fantasy A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is likely to provoke some strong reactions—good and bad.
Colin Farrell plays David, a single man
entering middle age. He attends a wedding where he meets Sarah (Margot Robbie),
who is also single. After a brief chat, Sarah goes off with another man. But on
David's drive home from the event, the GPS on his rental car starts giving him
strange instructions. It turns out Sarah's GPS is doing the same thing, and the
two are brought together and develop a connection.
Some might find this premise too cutesy
or twee. A very early scene where David rents his car from characters played by
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline is nails-on-a-blackboard grating (this
reviewer thought the film was headed into 1.5-star territory after that scene).
But thankfully, the movie gets better as it goes along.
Kogonada has a keen eye and many of his
visuals and shot compositions are striking. Farrell and Robbie have good
chemistry together. Plus, the movie gains increasing emotional heft as the GPS
guides David and Sarah to key moments in their pasts. David and Sarah each have
to reckon with the choices they made and the people they have wronged and
failed along the way. The emotions in these scenes feel very authentic. There's
a point when one is in or approaching middle age where that person has to take
a hard look at the consequences of their life decisions (and, if they're still
single, why that might be). A Big Bold Beautiful Journey captures that
self-examination well.
Even if A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
fizzles at the box office, it is still quirky, distinctive, and endearing
enough that it will likely find a following over time.
