A Big Bold Beautiful Journey now sees Turner-Smith and Farrell reunite \u2013 sort of \u2013 as a magical GPS system and the chronically single man she guides through an immersive, memory-recall road trip. Farrell\u2019s David is joined on this trip by an equally unattached stranger, Margot Robbie\u2019s Sarah<\/a>. David and Sarah both have their excuses for why two such aggressively beautiful people have chosen to remain alone. They\u2019re lying to themselves, of course. The truth can be found somewhere in their childhoods. Luckily, fate has saved them from some very pricey psychoanalyst appointments via a series of doors to the past, which materialise during the long drive back from a mutual acquaintance\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n Kogonada\u2019s style is best described as a kind of sophisticated sentimentality. His characters often come to the same motivational-poster conclusion that \u201clife is better when you\u2019re open\u201d, as it\u2019s phrased here. Only Kogonada neither wrote nor edited A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and so we\u2019re largely lacking in the sophistication department, or the soft musicality he\u2019s been able to construct in his earlier films. <\/p>\n The actual screenwriter, Seth Reiss, and editors Susan E Kim and Jonathan Alberts are clearly aiming here for something broader and brighter. When Bright Eyes\u2019 \u201cFirst Day of My Life\u201d hits the soundtrack, it becomes clear that this is, more than anything, paced and structured like a throwback to the Garden State (2004) era of whimsical indie romances<\/a>, complete with Robbie\u2019s own resuscitation of the \u201cManic Pixie Dream Girl\u201d. She scarfs down burgers for every meal! She loves a baker-boy hat! She challenges David to a spontaneous breath-holding competition! She delivers every line like she\u2019s about to blow pixie dust on him and scarper!<\/p>\n Yet Kogonada has an undeniable way with his actors, and despite the relative obviousness of the material, he still manages to mine some moving passages out of Robbie and Farrell (it\u2019s apparent, however, that in the casting of David\u2019s younger self, eyebrows took priority over Irish accent). Farrell, especially, has an undervalued versatility that extends far beyond what he does under pounds and pounds of Penguin makeup<\/a>. He\u2019s a performer with formidable control over his emotions, equally adept at tightening them like a drum when entering Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019s deadpan worlds<\/a> (in 2015\u2019s The Lobster or 2017\u2019s The Killing of a Sacred Deer), or, alternatively, delivering declarations of love here so open and forceful that you feel a sudden pressure as an audience member to respond. <\/p>\n Kogonada, whose visual essays diligently broke down various cinematic techniques, also takes the opportunity to include a few playful homages, from Jacques Demy to Jacques Tati (a veritable feast of Jacqueses). In fact, the strongest element of the film might, in fact, be the surreal establishing sequence in which David arrives at a rental-car company that consists of a single desk at one end of a gargantuan warehouse (very Tati), manned by Kevin Kline and a heavily accented Phoebe Waller-Bridge. They\u2019re delightful caricatures in a film constantly fighting against the conventional. Perhaps Kogonada, for his next therapy session, should consider letting them take the lead.<\/p>\n Dir: Kogonada. Starring: Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. 15, 109 minutes.<\/p>\n \u2018A Big Bold Beautiful Journey\u2019 is in cinemas from 19 September<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-141613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Colin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/AP25258511838057.jpeg\")
Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie in \u2018A Big Bold Beautiful Journey\u2019 (Sony Pictures)<\/p>\n