David R. Walker

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Director: Kogonada

Cast: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jodie Turner-Smith, Kevin Kline, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon

Running Time: 1 hour and 49 minutes

Film Rating: 5 out of 10

To understand what a brilliant film is, you also have to watch a terrible film. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen and to think that Oscar nominees Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Margot Robbie (I,Tonya) signed on to star in this film has a lot to be said for their agents.

One the major problems with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is that the Korean director Kogonada while displaying some odd visual flourishes just delivered possibly one of the most boring cinematic experiences ever made about two singletons, David and Sarah who meet at a wedding and are two of the most uninteresting characters ever created.

There is no conflict at all in an episodic and bizarre storyline by screenwriter Seth Reiss focussing on the surreal journey of David and Sarah as they revisit key moments of their past lives both painful and memorable. With the exception of a brief musical number in which Colin Farrell proves that he is no match for Ryan Gosling in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, the rest of the story is darkly lit and involves the odd couple driving in a car at night in some stylistic version of America which is somnambulistic and tiresome.

There is one other brief scene involving the two main stars along with their ex-lovers played by Billy Magnussen and Canadian actress Sarah Gadon in a crowded restaurant which is vaguely entertaining, otherwise the rest of this film is obscure, lagging any direction and zero conflict. Conflict drives narrative and lifts the characters off the screenplay into sentient beings filled with strong emotions which cause action. Unfortunately David and Sarah are cardboard cut-out characters which frankly Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie should have known better than to even agree to such a terrible script.

After watching brilliant cinema like Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is slow and bizarre, with a convoluted script and direction so bad that I am surprised Sony released this film.

If audiences enjoy boring love stories, then catch this film online or just skip it completely.

Unfortunately A Big Bold Beautiful Journey gets a film rating of 5 out of 10 and goes nowhere except through a series of doors. An unmitigated disaster of a film.

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