I have a real affection for stories in which ordinary-looking doors show up in the middle of nowhere and become portals to another realm or dimension. It could be the wardrobe that leads to the wintry woods of Narnia, or the doors that form an elaborate teleportation network in films like Monsters, Inc. or the Japanese anime Suzume.
One of the reasons I was curious to see A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is that it repurposes what is essentially a children's-fantasy device for a grown-up audience. It's a drama about love, loss and the fear of commitment, with a let's-go-on-an-adventure twist, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by way of The Phantom Tollbooth. I wish it were remotely as good as that sounds.
The movie was written by Seth Reiss, of the recent haute-cuisine horror-satire The Menu, and from the beginning, it's awash in strained whimsy. We're in an unidentified city where rain showers erupt out of nowhere, and everyone packs perfectly color-coordinated umbrellas.
Colin Farrell plays a single guy named David, who's heading to a friend's wedding, hundreds of miles away, when he runs into car trouble. Off he goes to rent a new one, at an eccentric agency run by Kevin Kline and a randomly German-accented Phoebe Waller-Bridge. They give him a car with a GPS that spouts cryptic directions and, at one point, asks, "Do you want to go on a big bold beautiful journey?" David says yes.
It soon becomes clear that this journey will be undertaken with Sarah, played by Margot Robbie, whom David meets and flirts awkwardly with at the wedding. Like David, Sarah is single and has little interest in jumping into a relationship.
But that begins to change as the two take the scenic route back to their home city. Along the way, the GPS steers them toward those magical doors, one after the other, which lead them both into scenes from the past. One door goes to a lighthouse that David remembers seeing as a child. Another opens into an art museum that Sarah used to visit with her mother. Still another leads to a fateful night when young David played the lead role in his high-school musical and was rejected by the girl he loved.
There's something low-key charming about how matter-of-factly David and Sarah submit to all this quasi-therapeutic enchantment, without asking too many questions. They're willing to go along for the ride, and so we go along with them — up to a point.
There are touching moments here and there, like when David finds himself comforting his dad, then a nervous new father, played by Hamish Linklater. Or when Sarah gets to be 12 again and relive a precious evening with her mom — that's Lily Rabe — before her untimely death. But even these poignant scenes feel like laborious stepping stones en route to a predictable outcome: David and Sarah are meant to be together, and should just get over their commitment-phobia already and take the plunge.
There's nothing wrong with that; most romantic comedies come to similar conclusions. But hearing the characters talk so relentlessly about their relationship hang-ups and parent issues would be a drag even without all these supernatural visual aids. And while Farrell and Robbie are both as likable as ever, the dynamic feels lopsided, mainly because Sarah's character is so poorly written. Not long after they meet, she tells David that she's bad news and will only hurt him, like she's hurt every other man she's been with. Sarah represents another kind of fantasy, the kind that's meant to titillate and moralize at the same time.
Perhaps the most mystifying thing about A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is that it was directed by Kogonada, one of the most interesting and philosophical voices to emerge in recent American independent cinema. He previously directed Farrell in the lovely sci-fi drama After Yang, and he made an exquisite debut with Columbus, about two young people bonding over a shared love of modern architecture.
Like those films, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey wants to engage us in heady conceits, transport us to another place, and say something about how we forge lasting relationships and memories. But not even Kogonada's elegant shot compositions or his skill with actors can work wonders with a script this hopeless. It's a magical doorway to nowhere.
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