A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is, unfortunately, the kind of movie in which a doting boyfriend tells his girlfriend that he has made reservations at “your favorite restaurant,” as if that is a way that couples speak to each other in real life. Most of us who are actually alive would, y’know, instead say the name of the restaurant; such is the shorthand understanding that passes between two people who have known each other for some time. But this film is not interested in such credibility. 

In that dopey beau’s defense, he is mostly a fantastical re-creation of a memory. Sarah (Margot Robbie) has traveled back into her past to revisit this scene, a prelude to a breakup, among other painful or otherwise illuminating moments that have come to define her guarded, pessimistic view on relationships. She’s on her quest alongside David (Colin Farrell), a lonely sad sack she met at a wedding and gave a gentle kiss-off after a mild flirtation. But destiny and a magical GPS system have reunited them on a road trip of the soul, on which boy and girl will reconcile themselves with their hang-ups and traumas and, just maybe, learn to love one another. 

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

The Bottom Line

A magical mystery tour, with greeting-card sentiment.

Release Date: Friday, September 19
Cast: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kevin Kline
Director: Kogonada
Screenwriter: Seth Reiss
Rated R,
1 hour 39 minutes

Yes, I did say magical GPS, just one of many twee devices used in director Kogonada’s cloying act of whimsy. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey first existed as a buzzed-about Black List screenplay by Seth Reiss before becoming a rare non-franchise studio film to actually make it to production. Pairing indie darling Kogonada (Columbus, After Yang) with white-hot, potentially commercial material indeed seemed like a big, bold, beautiful idea. What a shame that what resulted is such plasticky schmaltz, a movie that could easily have been based on a once-trendy inspirational Instagram account, Rupi Kaur meets Dallas Clayton by way of a Claritin ad. 

Kogonada fills the film with saturated colors, favoring the primary standbys of fire-engine red, raincoat yellow and mailbox blue. There is plenty of green, too, with sweeping vistas of California’s rolling hills before it all turns brown for the year. At least, the movie was filmed in California. For all I know, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey actually takes place on the Holodeck of the Starship Enterprise, so phony is everything contained within it. 

Perhaps most ersatz of all are the film’s emotional and psychological insights, puddle-deep ponderings of regret and grief and that reliable old friend of the screenwriter: fear of commitment. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey could be read as a neat distillation of all the necessary conversations that couples must have before they get serious, an unpacking of failed relationships, family issues, bad habits, nagging insecurities. Knowing all that, David and Sarah must then decide if they have it in themselves to take the leap. That was a great idea when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did it, less so in this wholly generic take on the same themes. 

The enchanted satnav system directs Sarah and David to various doors dotted along their circuitous route toward healing. One door leads David back to high school, where he relives his agony over a girl in his school play. It’s fun to see Farrell doing a few bits of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, but other than that, I’m not sure what we glean from this experience other than a reminder that teen heartbreak is formative but no fun. Another door leads Sarah back to the time of her mother’s death; there she rather swiftly processes the guilt she feels for being unavailable at the time, too busy carrying on an affair with a professor. 

A few more Pensieve memories — sorry, door memories — are accessed, all meant to give us a picture of the particular wounds and neuroses that make up these characters. They don’t feel terribly particular at all, though — not in Reiss’ bland dialogue nor in Robbie and Farrell’s wanly appealing, indistinct performances. It’s all very easy, ideas of problems rather than actual problems. True ugliness, true complication are nowhere to be found in Kogonada’s finger-paint-hued fable.

There is a nice concept buried underneath the tidy cutesiness, a generous encouragement to not let all of life’s baggage get so heavy that it halts forward momentum. Perhaps the real-world analog of a wizard’s Waze is simply talk therapy, a slightly less bold or beautiful journey, though it can be a big one. Any film that urges people to see their foibles and worries as dynamic parts of themselves rather than unmoveable millstones is probably putting a healthy enough message into the world. But it might be nice if traditional monogamous couplehood wasn’t fixed as the one true goal of such crucial work, as it is in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Sometimes it’s good, and necessary, to open that door just for your own sake.