Review: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

 

Director Kogonada's third feature, "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey," is the first of his films that didn't quite work for me. Its two leads - Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie - help to make the picture watchable and there are some amusing moments, but the film feels like a Charlie Kaufman movie if you stripped away some of the darker elements and deep thematic resonance and just went straight for the quirky and, in this case, the neuroses.

The film is a romantic comedy, of sorts, about two people who are commitment-phobes for various reasons. When we first meet Farrell's David, he is mourning the death of his father (Hamish Linklater) and has recently called it quits with his girlfriend. Robbie's Sarah is a version of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl trope that appeared more in movies about a decade or so ago. She makes it clear that she intentionally sabotages relationships, especially when they seem to be going well.

The duo meet at a wedding where they flirt but resist the temptation to take it any further. David has rented a car with a GPS that seems to be sending him on some sort of spiritual journey. Sarah gets mixed up in the journey and has some moments of her own.

It all starts when they come upon a door in the middle of a forest that leads them back to previous points in their lives - a lighthouse where David spent a reflective moment in the past is one, while a visit to Sarah's mother is another. The longest sequence involves David traveling back to his high school, where he takes part in the school production of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and again makes the mistake of declaring his feelings to a girl who wasn't interested.

One of the issues with the film is that other than the somewhat forced quirkiness - the scene where he picks up the car with the magical GPS strains under the weight of trying to be funny - the picture doesn't really tell us too much about the characters before it immediately throws us head-first into their neuroses. 

We have a scene where David sees his father waiting to learn about his newborn son, the one involving his high school heartbreak, and another having to do with his parents' relationship. Then, we have Sarah's visit with her mother, which draws attention to the strained relationship she has with her father. There's another scene in which both of them meet their recent exes at a coffee shop and they dish out all of their problems. At times, the film feels like an expensive therapy session.

A movie that the film attempts to be emulating is Michel Gondry's wonderful "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," in which a couple whose relationship has failed gets the chance to renew the evidence as they plan to have their minds wiped clean. That film too was offbeat and featured a setup that was beyond the realm of the likely, all the while being emotionally resonant. "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey" appears to want to be a film in that register, but it feels more one-dimensional.

I'm perhaps making the film sound worse than it is. The picture is often visually stimulating and the two leads are, not surprisingly, good despite the material. Kogonada's first two features - "Columbus" and "After Yang" - were also offbeat indie movies with a distinctive vibe, but I found them to be a bit weightier and more compelling than this one. The film has its moments, but it feels as if it's missing something.