A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

From the man that brought you After Yang (Kogonanda) comes another fantasy drama, this time with forced romance. I say forced because this movie would have worked better if this was solely a friendship journey instead of a romantic one. At no point did I feel like these (Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie) characters were meant to be together. Even though I liked the way they look together, something about their character’s dynamic feels off. The playfulness is lost in the brick wall style change of scenery that completely pulls me out of whatever they had built previously.

Let’s break down this title. I’ll start with big; They mention Big. That’s about the only thing big about it. Bold is described as : showing or requiring a fearless spirit. To me, they’re just driving cars to and from a wedding and then walking through some doors from their past. Not exactly bold in my opinion, especially with the pretty bland aspects of their past lives. Beautiful, okay yeah I’ll give them that. The characters are impossible to look away from and the coloring around the world to the clothing makes for an incredible palette. Now journey is a word that can be used for a trip to the store or one across space, so it’s hard to deny that this was a journey. With all these defining adjectives, I will say I expected more.

I really liked Farrell and Robbie together, like really really liked. Just as romantic prospects, they don’t fully work (sorry for saying it again, it’s true). Placing them on a rainy soundstage for 90 minutes was super smart, because they can certainly act and act well off each other. Their fate is placed in the hands of a pretty lackluster script that tries to speed run something that didn’t even need to be talked about unfortunately. Too many doors were opened, or maybe just the wrong ones.

The message of this film is one we have seen countless times. A woman who thinks she isn’t good enough for anyone and a man that is lost. It doesn’t do anything new to make you feel empathy for their pasts, that they focus too much on. There being no pushback to the slight fantastical change to their lives also left a sour taste in my mouth. A lot of the small journeys they go on felt inconsequential to their future and the quirkiness had me feeling like I was watching an inside joke of a car commercial instead of a story meant for the masses.

A lot of negatives to basically say, it’s fine. If only it had some heart.

5.6/10