Maybe the letdown of the year so far. I love Kogonada’s movies before this one. The talented director finds a way to extract the most out of his tales, whether their scope is small or gigantic. I was hoping a bigger script and more movie stars would make A Big Bold Beautiful Journey something really special. Instead, the flashiness and money taint Kogonada’s laser focus on script and story, washing the film away like mud in a rainstorm.
Lots of rainstorms for David (Colin Farrell) on his ride to a wedding hours away. After renting a car from a strange Mechanic (Kevin Cline) and his indecipherably accented Cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), David goes to yet another wedding, single, and lonely. Even though sparks appear to fly with Sarah (Margot Robbie) after a meet cute, the two part ways probably to never see each other again. Unfortunately the GPS’s in their identical 1994 Saturn’s have other ideas, pairing them up and taking them to a door in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. Methinks they might walk into it?
When Kogonada’s scripts work, they entrance the viewer in this ephemeral state, not quite in a dream, not quite in reality. Which is so upsetting with this one, the first script that wasn’t his. I was wondering as Colin Farrell was talking to a mostly dubbed Margot Robbie, who SAYS things like this to people? Did writer Seth Reiss ever, you know, FLIRT with anyone before? Farrell and Robbie are great actors, and even they can’t save this garbage, not a great start for the two people we’re supposed to root to fall in love with each other. Kogonada tries to make up for it by incredible cinematography, the lone bright spot here. It could be because I was so not invested in the love story, but I was smitten with the Ansel Adamsy landscapes Kogonada lays out for us: the most beautiful rolling hills, incredible sunrises and sunsets, and some wonderful imagery very close to as special as Makoto Shinkai’s, who beat him to the door idea a couple years ago.
But inevitably we go back on the road, deeper into these uninteresting people. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey wants to be It’s a Wonderful Life so badly it throws everything out there to make our hearts leap and eyes cry. But with no real connection between the leads, the movie is hoping it’s going to have at least some deep insights to leave the viewers with about relationships, life, and love. But the deeper we go, the more we realize there’s even less there than we thought. I counted one kind of interesting idea right before the forced break up you know is coming, about past behavior, certainty, uncertainty, and hope. Otherwise, the script just grasps at things everyone learns as they grow up and search for love: first heartbreak, parental traumas, loving and losing, making mistakes, etc. The conversations get hilariously direct and inhuman as we’re supposed to be feeling deeply human, and the song choices literally steal the most obvious idea the scene needs to present to get the point across.
I would have settled for A Life Less Ordinary‘s ambitious flaws instead of this manipulative crap. Kogonada, I’m glad you got to see if you can take anyone’s words and translate them to your own. But it turns out you’re a one of one. So next time, come as director AND writer, and I’ll be the first one there, ready to be wowed by you again. But no more if this director for hire crap please? Even if they tempt you with Margot, Gosling, or even Timmy Tim Tim.