A good idea can somehow flounder in execution. Such is the case with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. There are as many ideas running around A Big Bold Beautiful Journey as there are random doors in this universe. That is one of the film's many problems.
Single man David Langley (Colin Farrell) is off to a friend's wedding when his car is booted. Conveniently, there is a sign for "The Car Rental Agency" right where David can see it. The two attendants at the almost Kafkaesque facility (Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline) give him the only car available: a 1994 Saturn SL. They also push a GPS on him.
At the wedding, he finds Sarah (Margot Robbie). She and David have a conversation so opaque that it makes the dialogue between Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh in The Manchurian Candidate sound like a Noel Coward comedy. On his way back home, the GPS starts talking to him, asking if he would like to go on "a big bold beautiful journey". David is pretty much pushed into doing so. That leads him to Burger King, where Sarah is also on "a big bold beautiful journey".
From here, David and Sarah travel through many doors, reliving their lives. They go to a Canadian lighthouse where David traveled alone. They go to a museum where Sarah and her late mother would visit after hours once a week. David relives his high school years when he confessed his love to his How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying costar. Sarah recreates an imagined visit to when her mother died while David sees his father (Hamish Linklater) when David was born.
Things take a turn when they are in an accident and the car explodes. Desiring to go home, both end up in their past homes. David is his own father, Sarah's mother (Lily Rabe) sees her as her 12-year-old daughter. Will they find peace with their pasts and each other in the present?
Sometimes the end results can be downright loony. Take when Sarah, accompanied by David, goes back in time to the hospital when her mother died. This is the actual dialogue between Sarah and Dr. Vernon (Joyce Guy).
Doctor: How is everything at school?
Sarah: I think at this point I was having an affair with my professor. Can we just get to it?
Doctor: Sure. Your mom passed away about an hour ago.
Sarah: Was she comfortable?
Doctor: She was comfortable.
Sarah: No pain?
Doctor: None.
Sarah: You're f---ing sure?
Doctor: I'm f---ing sure.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey does not initially make clear until after this oddball exchange that this did not happen. At the time of her mother's passing Sarah was bonking her professor, Sarah tells us. The previous time travels, we are led to believe that they occurred as presented (the lighthouse, the museum, David as J. Pierpont Finch). This time, however, it was imagined. Perhaps our first clue should have been when Dr. Vernon does not react to Sarah's startling confession. The entire exchange, however, is so deadpan one wonders if director Kogonada wanted his actors to be so droll at what should be a traumatic moment. It does not make things, which already are taking more offbeat turns, look rational even in this fantasy world.
One cannot blame Kogonada alone for how jumbled and disjointed A Big Bold Beautiful Journey feels. The lion's share should go to Reiss' screenplay. We can be a bit generous in how David's car being booted was the catalyst for getting things started. We can be less generous in how a bizarre GPS that looks like a junior Hal-9000 is giving people directions and orders. Somehow, it makes David and Sarah look weak to be taking orders from the GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith). Frankly, I would be frightened by such a turn.
I'll walk that back a bit in that I would already have been frightened by "The Car Rental Agency" (as awful a name as has been created for film). Phoebe Waller-Bridges for reasons no one may ever understand spoke with a bizarre German accent and dropped F-Bombs with abandon. That usually led to "Female Cashier" laughing at her own wittiness. Kevin Kline was quite unrecognizable as "The Mechanic", but not in a good way. His sole scene was when he was at the "Timely Inn", where he looked disheveled and even confused. Creepy was the term that I wrote.
That is the big thing with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. There is an interesting idea or set of ideas coursing their way through. However, it is like they were all thrown in together to see where it would go. David, for example, both interacts with his father and ends up as his own father. The first is when David was born (his father terrified about a heart condition that David was born with). The second is when he ends up "home". The film is unclear whether or not David was even aware that he had this heart condition. It was something that was introduced here, late in the film, and not brought up again.
I want to say that Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie gave it their all to sell the characters. I will give them a little leeway in that there was not much in the material that they could use. However, more often than not, both looked downright bored. The only time that there seemed to be any spark was when they ended up performing a number from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. It looked odd but at least it gave both the actors and characters a bit of pep.
Other scenes, like how they ended up dumping their separate lovers at the same restaurant, came across poorly. It felt gimmicky and unrealistic, even in what is meant as a fantasy. The faux-cutesy Joe Hisaishi music did not help matters throughout.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is everything but big bold and beautiful.
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