A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey (2025)

The ingredients:

• Two beautiful, talented stars
• Kooky Character Traits
• Quirky, emotional back stories
• Staged moments and a musical interlude
• A Phoebe Waller-Bridge cameo

All in all, that sounds like a Rachel shaped film-cake.

But Kogonada’s A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey didn’t quite make it out of the oven fully baked.

I’m not saying the movie is without merit. In a starring system I would give it 3.5 out of 5. I enjoyed it, but it left me weirdly unaffected. It felt like it was trying to do and be more than a romantic comedy. Stylistically it was elevated and interesting, but it lacked any more substance. In the end, if there was a bigger philosophical point, I didn’t get it.

Let’s say what I did enjoy: The umbrellas at the wedding. Colin Farrell reviving his high school musical (apparently that’s really his voice). Finally recognising Kevin Kline after struggling to place him. The clowning of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The attractiveness of the two stars (although age-gap issues did spoil this a little). The cinematic road shots.

A Big Bold Beautiful Adventure is categorised as a rom-com, and whilst it has a meet-cute and other rom-com tropes, such as a beautiful couple having to overcome obstacles to find love, it might be better placed in the road-trip movie genre, with a hint of surrealism.

David (Colin Farrell) and Sarah (Margot Robbie) meet at a mutual friends’ wedding. David has only made it to the wedding on time after his car was clamped and he had to use the services of a bizarre Car Rental Company that appear to be auditioning him for the part of Saturn SL driver and bully him into also hiring an idiosyncratic GPS (in case his phone “craps out”).

Although obviously attracted to each other David declines the offer to dance with Sarah. A decision he instantly regrets when he watches her dance with someone else.

The next morning at the behest of his GPS he takes a detour on a big, bold, beautiful journey where he meets Sarah again. They travel together making stops at various doors to their past lives at various critical time points.

Reviews had warned me that I would be faced with the old Pixie Manic Dream Girl stereotype. But I wasn’t. Sarah might have a penchant for sidewards glances, Baker Boy caps and some comic lines, but she wasn’t manic. What I saw instead was control, a restrained performance trying to counter the mess of her back story.

We get to see the problems that have produced a life of commitment phobia. Flawed humans learn to forgive the other flawed humans in their lives and themselves. All lovely. But something is missing.

Was it that the tone was inconsistent? Stylised shots, surreal unattached doors, clashing with naturalistic acting.

Was it that the metaphorical language was a bit too clunky? Look a door. Go through it like Alice in Wonderland and discover how life could be different if you could bid your mother a proper farewell or give your younger self a lecture.

Or was it that it was insubstantial? Are the two characters really going on such a big journey to discover whether soulmates are real? Was there not a bigger message of connection beyond romance that would’ve been more worthy of this excavation of a past?

Or was it simply that it wasn’t big and bold enough? Student film vibes on big budget that didn’t quite make a big, beautiful point when the world really needs something extraordinary.

The big question I was left with was: was it okay that a woman two rows in front of me had taken her shoes off and rested her socked feet on a seat in front of her? (It was a near empty cinema – only 5 people in. Does that make a difference? Feel free to comment below).

I’d still recommend the film. Visually it does some lovely stuff. Umbrellas, winding roads, paintings moving from static to action, the long walk to a car rental reception desk, parallel stories in a hospital setting. It won’t be anyone’s film of the year, but it is entertaining.

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