A Big Bold Beautiful Journey: Film Review

Not even A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’s visual spectacle can pull the film out of its narrative ditch and elevate its bland romance.

This is the premise of Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a film that never quite delivers the emotional impact it wishes to convey.

At the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to David (Colin Farrell, of Ballad of a Small Player), who is about to leave for a friend’s wedding but has to rent a car at the last minute after his own vehicle fails him. When he arrives at the car rental service place to pick up his automobile, it isn’t the huge parking lot full of cars that you’d expect to see. Instead, it’s a huge warehouse with two employees sitting at a long desk who insist that David should sign up for the added GPS service feature in case his phone “craps out” at any minute.

Once David finally arrives at the wedding venue, and the night is underway, he meets a free-spirited lady named Sarah (Margot Robbie, of Barbie), a mutual friend of the couple who are getting married. They’re instantly attracted to one another and engage in conversation throughout the evening, only to go their own separate ways. However, their paths cross again the day after leaving the wedding, as they run into each other at a fast-food restaurant.

From there, they are both led to mysterious doors scattered throughout the countryside along the roadway through the trusty GPS that the car rental company insisted David should buy. Each doorway they enter leads them back to various moments in their lives, which they get to relive and experience together. Through these moments, they confront some of their past demons, gain closure, and, most importantly, attempt to heal from past wounds that have made a lasting impression on them.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’s heart is in the right place, and there is a sentimental message at the film’s core, but the script never quite manages to reflect its themes in an effective, believable way. One of the biggest reasons for this is the fact that I just couldn’t buy into the romance between David and Sarah due to a lack of chemistry between Farrell and Robbie, which is a great shame, given how talented both actors are. Throughout the film’s runtime, the love story never feels genuine, as their romance is riddled with clichés and is quite juvenile in terms of how it’s written.

David is a sweet-natured, charming soul, and Farrell reflects such traits through the character effortlessly. Our leading man is one of the best parts of the film, as the character actually feels like a real person. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Sarah. After my screening, I reflected on what it actually was that made the character feel so fictitious. I concluded that she feels more like a concept than an actual human being. The film continues to bang us over the head with the notion that Sarah sees herself as a bad person (her words). She’s the classic burned-out cynic archetype who doesn’t feel deserving of happiness or love. The fact of the matter is that the character feels more like the sort of naive teenager you’d find in a high school drama than a mature adult.

Although we have to suspend disbelief to a point with romance movies, the love story between the pair also feels unearned, considering how little time they spend together. This only adds to the disingenuous nature of it and how unbelievable their strong feelings for each other are in such a short amount of time. There’s also a lot of the story that doesn’t make much sense and is never really explained.

Even though we are living in a fantasy world, and logic goes out the window to an extent, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey doesn’t even try to explain how the magical door service came to be, nor how it attempts to match potential love interests. In fact, they completely skip over it and just mask it with the mysterious rental car service. But instead of being effectively ambiguous, it just feels like lazy writing, with no rhyme or reason to the lore behind it.

Despite the script’s glaring drawbacks, what I will say is that the film is stunning to look at. Each sequence where viewers are transported back in time to moments in David and Sarah’s lives is reflected in creative, visually engrossing ways, even if most of the emotion is lost along the way. That said, it appears that A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is trying to overcompensate with its visual spectacle. The love story at the center of the film doesn’t have enough juice in the tank from the get-go and quickly starts to run on empty. Sadly, not even all the pretty bells and whistles can pull the film out of its narrative ditch.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey will be released in U.S. & Canadian theaters, in U.K. & Irish cinemas, and globally in theaters on September 19, 2025.