Film Review: A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY (2025): Kogonada Swings and Misses with a Flat Romance That Goes Nowhere
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey Review
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Kogonada, written by Seth Reiss and starring Colin Farell, Margot Robbie, Jennifer Grant, Hamish Linklater, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kevin Kline, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lucy Thomas, Brandon Perea, Calahan Skogman, Jacqueline Novak, Michelle Mao, Jason Kravits, Lily Rabe, Shelby Simmons, Billy Magnussen and Chloe East.
Kogonada is a gifted filmmaker and has a lot of talent which was so evident in his masterpiece, Columbus. Maybe he’s lost his magic touch, or the writing is simply too flat for him to inject life into it with the new romance, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Kogonada re-teams with his After Yang co-star, Colin Farrell, with this latest dud and Barbie, herself, Margot Robbie is miscast beside Farrell in a would-be love story that starts off with a lot of promise before going off a cliff about a half hour in.
As the movie begins, Farrell’s character, David is going to a wedding where the lovely song from an Amazon commercial, “Full of Life,” plays in the background. When David meets Robbie’s character, Sarah, there’s a bit of chemistry between the pair as she asks him to marry her. Is she being serious or playing around? She asks him to dance and he refuses which leads her into the arms of another man.
There’s also the gimmick of a pair of somewhat conniving people known as The Cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, actually quite amusing here) and The Mechanic (Kevin Kline, remember him?). These two characters are “angels” of sorts who run a rental car service that offers David a 1994 vehicle with no GPS. They have David’s headshot on the table, but David insists he’s not an actor. Waller-Bridge gets some funny lines, and her performance is the saving grace of the movie.
Soon, Sarah just happens to be sitting at a Burger King where David is eating and the two start to talk and rekindle the chemistry they had together at the wedding. They both apparently have interest in one another, but the script doesn’t let their interaction get too steamy. In fact, the movie is geared for younger audiences around college-age with all its philosophical and metaphorical suggestions. Sarah and David are probably a match made in Heaven (or simply matched by the rental car people), but the movie takes forever to get to the point as it analyzes both characters’ previous bad relationships and the two main characters’ insecurities which prevent them from moving forward. They head towards love at a snail’s pace, and the audience will feel the movie dragging at times.
I really liked Lily Rabe as Sarah’s mother and Billy Magnussen (known in the credits as simply “The Man”). Margot Robbie and Lily Rabe have some terrific moments on-screen as Sarah (as a 12-year-old girl in an adult body) asks the mother to watch a movie with her. This film starts to get very emotional in spots but holds back in terms of providing scenes that will inspire tears due to flat writing and boring dialogue. Magnussen and Robbie share some interesting interaction though The Man is ultimately an under-written character at the end of the day.
What A Big Bold Beautiful Journey needed was a dose of heart and another polish in the writing department. They came up with a clever idea of re-visiting our former selves to discover where our future should be headed, but under Kogonada’s lackluster direction, there’s little relief from Farrell’s overwhelming accent and Robbie’s insistence on making her character appear to be too good to be true. Maybe she is, but are these characters really two people we want to spend two hours with without the essence of strongly written dialogue backing them up? They seem a bit too ordinary to want to invest time in and that hurts the movie.
Kogonada needed a little more guidance on this project. His heart is in the right place, but even everyday people need to have more edge to them than the characters here possess. Both Farrell’s David and Robbie’s Sarah are interesting when taken individually as characters, but, together, they lack chemistry. When the movie ends, it feels like they’re settling for one another because of the disappointment of their past experiences. Instead of a new beginning for them as a couple, it feels like a cop-out for them.
Maybe I’m being too hard on this film. Romance fans could like the idea of Robbie and Farrell playing in a time-tripping story intent on revealing ideas why some relationships work out while others simply fade away. I admire the courage and determination of two stars as big as Robbie and Farrell to take on a project as risky as A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. I also hope Kogonada was not a one-hit wonder. Columbus was a great film. We almost all can agree on that. Many people loved After Yang (I did not). Now, with this latest picture, one is left to wonder if Kogonada can save his directing career with his next project after this one. I sure hope he can.
Rating: 5/10
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