Lack of specifics turns big, bold swing into a beautiful miss
Never rent a car from Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Or maybe do, because her car rental agency in “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” has magical machinations designed to send terminally single people on a voyage through time and space to work out their issues and let their guard down enough to connect with a soulmate.
From afar, “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” with movie stars in full swoon, might give skeptics pause — it looks far too sappy and saccharine. But there are indeed some trustworthy elements that make this high-concept romance worth a second view. Director Kogonada has delivered subtle and affecting films in “Columbus” and “After Yang,” and stars Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie could sell just about any love story.
The script is by Seth Reiss, of “The Menu,” and the film is of the romantic magical realism genre, like “About Time,” “Palm Springs,” “The Lake House,” or any number of time travel romances, in which someone unsatisfied with life is forced to confront their issues to fix their future, through an inexplicable reality-warping narrative device.
Which brings us back to Waller-Bridge and the car rental agency she runs in a giant empty warehouse with the help of Kevin Kline. Her character has a German accent, a potty mouth and only two cars available — old Saturns — and she insists that David (Farrell) get the GPS when he rents one to drive to a wedding. There, he encounters the beguiling, elusive Sarah (Margot Robbie), a manic pixie dream girl if there ever was one, and on the way home, the animated voice of his GPS asks him if he’d like to take “a big, bold, beautiful journey.” He accepts and it leads him right to a Burger King where he and Sarah re-meet over a couple of cheeseburgers.
The pair decide to embark on the magical, GPS-directed journey, making side-of-the-road pit stops where various doors await them. Through each, they step into one of their memories: a favorite museum, a solo trip to a lighthouse, a high school musical, a bad breakup in a cafe. Each memory allows them to see some of these profound experiences and romantic traumas in a new light; their journey through these memories is intended to help them work out their issues (he’s a picky lover boy, she’s unfaithful) so they can let their guard down and fall in love with each other.
The existence of “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is laudable simply because we don’t get these kinds of original, deeply sincere, slightly corny and unapologetically romantic movies on the big screen all that often. Kogonada has taken Reiss’ script and artfully elevated it with bright pops of primary color interwoven into the storytelling, and theatrically staged moments, like when David and Sarah step into a painting on a darkened set. This layer of artifice and reference to classical musicals blends fantasy and cosmic existentialism with the more grounded elements of the screenplay’s emotional trajectory.
It’s interesting, and intriguing, but the script itself is frustratingly vague. David and Sarah live in an unnamed city on “the Northside” and “Downtown,” respectively. We don’t know what they do for work, how they take their coffee, who their friends are or what fills their day.
The anonymity is intentional but works against our ability to connect with the story. Our protagonists are vague avatars placed within a skeletal story framework that traffics more in semantics, symbolism and signifiers than it does specifics.
Mostly, this film is just two very attractive people parroting truisms about how hard dating can be, set against a visually appealing backdrop.
What should be a tearjerker and a moving story about learning to be open to life’s surprises doesn’t have much more impact than a beautifully rendered inspirational Instagram quote. There are some affecting inner child healing moments, but without details and specifics, this is a big, bold swing, but a beautiful miss.