Movie Review: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

 

There's such a steady stream of gossip about movies being pedaled on the internet these days that it would be irresponsible and inadvisable to accept the vast majority of this information at face value. However, there are instances where a studio's handling of a certain film presents some concerns that validate these whispers and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is one of those cases. First off, Sony's promotional campaign was limited to in-theater trailers and a handful of joint press appearances from stars Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie. Secondly, despite boasting a prime late September release date, being headlined by a pair of Oscar-nominated actors with name recognition and having a splashy writer/director team (Seth Reiss-who co-wrote The Menu, arthouse darling Kogonada-who directed Columbus and After Yang) behind it, it skipped the fall festival circuit entirely. This combination led to a lack of juice for a wide release that was notable even by today's standards where the majority of movies come and go from theaters with little fanfare.  After seeing A Big Bold Beautiful Journey last weekend, I can't say that I fault Sony at all for their handling of it as the film just doesn't work at all.

As the title indicates, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a film that aspires to be a sweeping romantic tale. It aims to achieve this by bringing together a pair of strangers (Farrell, Robbie) who've sabotaged every relationship they've ever been in then taking them on a fantastical road trip via a magical GPS that forces them to confront various painful moments from their past with the hopes that the perspective they gain from looking back at their past traumas/failures will allow them to find the love that's long alluded them both with each other. It's a refreshingly strange conceit for a movie that had the potential to be a really moving, subversive love story. The execution just happens to be so shockingly bland for something that's so inherently original that it was DOA before the titular adventure even begun.  

The boring nature of the movie is primarily driven by how poor the pairing of Farrell and Robbie as the prospective couple proves to be. While Reiss' cornball dialogue and Kogonada's stiff direction certainly don't help matters, sharper writing or direction couldn't have saved the lack of true chemistry that exists between these two. At best, they feel like two cordial co-workers who could stumble into a one-night stand after an office party if they had both taken enough trips to the punch bowl. I'm not naive enough to pretend that people with tepid connections don't end up getting married all the time, but having a "fuck it, let's be together" relationship serve as the emotional center of a whimsical romance that's supposed to be about two hurt people who were too afraid to open their hearts finally choosing to surrender to the power of true love is laughably unconvincing. What's ironic is that off-camera Farrell and Robbie appear to like each other just fine, so this might just be a case of talented actors not being able to dig into their tool chest and produce the sparks required to sell an undeniable romance on screen.

When Sony spent $50 million on the rights to produce A Big Bold Beautiful Journey back in May 2023, they probably never envisioned that it would turn into the "what the hell happened?!?" movie of the year among cinephiles and completely fizzle out at the box office (the total gross as of Wednesday of is a measly $4.43 mil). Alas, that's just how creative endeavors pan out sometimes and hopefully the brass won't use the shoulder shrugs and blank faces this film was mostly met with to scare themselves from taking chances on other unique original projects in the future.                        

Grade: C-