With heart etched firmly on its brightly coloured sleeve, Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey places romantic earnestness and bittersweet heartache in the foreground and throws cynicism and subtlety to the wind. And you know what? I appreciate that. In an era where romances are either formulaic to the point of making the viewer feel very little or soap opera tragedies and recycled rom-coms that are taken verbatim from everything that proceeded it in the genre, I’ll always prefer a brazen, heartfelt big swing over something that’s playing things far too safe. In life and love, if you don’t put yourself out there, you’ll accomplish nothing, and even if you failed, at least you went down with a fight. While some could accuse A Big Bold Beautiful Journey of being a gloriously messy, style heavy melange of emotions, I defy anyone to say this thing is taking an easy path. The sweetness of it all and overall lax sense of narrative direction might give some pause, but for me, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is one of the more interesting romances to come out in a long time.
David (Colin Farrell) heads out his front door on the way to wedding, when he discovers his car has been booted. Thankfully, he glances a hastily written, bare bones flyer for a car rental agency nearby that surely seems credible. There, a pair of interesting clerks (Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline) rent him a reliable 1994 Saturn (the only car they have available), complete with a complimentary GPS (in case his phone craps out). David makes it to the wedding on time, and while he’s there, he meets Sarah (Margot Robbie), another single guest who just so happens to have used the same rental car agency. They flirt a bit, and there appears to be a spark between them, but they ultimately go their separate ways and back to their humdrum lives. On the way home, the insistent GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) asks David if he wants to go on a big bold beautiful journey, and with nothing better to do, he accepts. The trip brings him back into contact with Sarah almost immediately, and they’re off on an adventure that includes pit stops that act as portals to some of the lowest points in their past (break ups, traumas, high school musicals), providing moral support for each other along the way.
I mean this in the best possible way, but A Big Bold Beautiful Journey has what people like to call “big theatre kid energy.” The script from Seth Reiss (The Menu) feels like it was written by a highly creative youngster who cares a lot about huge emotional payoffs and grand sentiments and very little about storytelling logic. While A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is built around characters the viewer will come to know over the course of the film, as a whole, this is nothing more than a loosely connected set pieces built around a traditional meet-cute romance. It very literally moves between scenes like they’re points on a map or levels in a video game; unfiltered fantasy built upon a well of big feels. It’s not the best way to tell a story, but it gives intuitive actors like Farrell and Robbie and a visually dynamic filmmaker like Kogonada a lot to play with.
Kogonada (Columbus, After Yang) draws on his background as cinematic essayist to take viewers through a variety of settings from screwball comedy to high school drama to full on musical and avant garde European cinema, sometimes opting for more than one in a single scene. It’s all very colourful and vibrant to a point where Kogonada can make the simple act of two people eating in a Burger King look like a picture postcard. The script seems to have few rules (which includes adult characters playing child versions of their past selves and plenty of recognizable faces popping up for cameos as faces from David and Sarah’s past), and once our star-crossed couple starts going through a variety of of random doorways in odd places, the viewer has to make a leap of faith whether they’re willing to go along with any of this or not. What Kogonada brings to the table is a consistent, uniform tone of playfulness along this journey of self discovery and the romantic feeling out process. Everything feels weird and odd, and the script makes huge leaps of its own that are hard to overlook, even with a healthy suspension of disbelief. But one thing that’s never in question is the tone, which moves as assuredly as calm waves.
Farrell and Robbie’s performances are smart, instinctual, and display a chemistry that grows over time rather than bursts to life fully formed. The film is bubbling over with life out of the gate, so Farrell and Robbie’s decision to build a connection over the course of their journey together is another sensible, grounding force for such a fanciful effort. They question each other in meaningful ways, are quick wits, and understand their characters fully, even when the viewer doesn’t entirely know what’s going on. As much as A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a romance, it’s also a story of two lost souls who’re way too hard on themselves learning self compassion. A romance only works if both people in the relationship can show some self-awareness and understanding. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is like watching partners go through couples therapy before they’re even fully involved with one another.
It’s all very silly and dorky, but in an endearing way. I’m not sure if A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is messy on purpose or as a result of some tinkering along the way, but those rough edges only make the film’s slick packaging all the more intriguing. While some will assuredly bristle at such rampant, unchecked earnestness, those who can still remember what it’s like to a sadsack teenager crying into their pillow after being rejected by a crush or can recall struggling with the loss of a loved one will find a small bit of themselves in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. It inspires a lot of mixed feelings, but all of them are humanely handled in a visually and emotionally complex way. There’s nothing safe about it, even though it’s a rather gentle movie, and it’s hard not to show some degree of appreciation for that.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, September 19, 2025.
