‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ Review: Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell Go on a Generic Road Trip of the Soul in Kogonada’s Cloying Misfire

A buzzed-about Black List script and two major stars should have spelled success. But Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey swaps emotional authenticity for overly stylized sentiment.

There’s a difference between style and sentiment, and somewhere along its meandering, metaphor-laden route, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey forgets how to balance either. Directed by Kogonada, one of the most visually distinct filmmakers of the last decade, and written by The Menu co-writer Seth Reiss, this is a rare studio film that dares to exist outside of franchises, IP, or multiverses. It is, at least in ambition, a bold swing. But that ambition doesn’t always translate into resonance. Instead, the film feels like a collection of good ideas arranged into a cinematic vision board—attractive, curated, and utterly frustrating.

We follow Sarah (Margot Robbie), a cautious romantic with emotional armor forged from past trauma, and David (Colin Farrell), a lonely introvert who’s more ghost than man. The two are pushed together by fate—or more accurately, by a magical GPS voice that begins to reroute their lives. After a brief spark of flirtation at a wedding, Sarah abruptly exits his life. But this sentient satellite navigator reunites them and sends them off on a literal and emotional road trip, revisiting their pasts and the personal wounds that have left them stuck.

As they’re guided to mysterious “doors” along the highway—each one a portal into a formative moment from their histories—the film slips between timelines, memories, fantasies, and regrets. These doors become the film’s central device, each unlocking a chapter of inner exploration. One leads David back to high school, where a failed crush and musical theater mishap still linger. Another takes Sarah to the deathbed of her mother, dredging up guilt over an affair with a professor that left her absent during her final moments. These are intended to be cathartic flashpoints. But they often feel more like surface-level therapy sessions, simplified to fit within the confines of digestible, digest-quote-ready narrative beats.

In structure and tone, the film attempts to blend Charlie Kaufman’s dream logic with the emotional accessibility of Richard Curtis. It’s trying to be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by way of Amélie. But where Eternal Sunshineearned its surrealism through psychological specificity and lived-in pain, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey relies heavily on abstraction, platitude, and aesthetic gloss. Characters don’t talk like people; they talk like self-help books. “What if we aren’t broken, but just rearranged by pain?” muses one. Another confesses love not in dialogue, but in soliloquy. Every line feels engineered to be underlined in a Tumblr post.

That hollowness is particularly surprising coming from Kogonada, whose past work was so sensitive and introspective. Columbus (2017) was a miracle of minimalism—quiet, architectural, loaded with subtext. After Yang (2021) blended grief and futurism with astonishing delicacy. But in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, his mastery of mood and texture is buried under whimsical production design and tonal overstatement. The colors are loud: bold reds, saturated yellows, saturated greens—primary emotions, delivered in primary tones. Cinematographer Benjamin Loeb frames it all beautifully, but the compositions begin to feel redundant, almost oppressive in their prettiness.

That’s not to say the film is without merit. Joe Hisaishi’s score, as expected, is lush and emotionally generous. His music flows beneath scenes like a balm, occasionally elevating moments that would otherwise fall flat. There’s a sweeping grace to the way he underscores regret, a tenderness in the way strings swell under brief silences. He gives the film a soul, even when the script fails to.

As for the performances, Robbie and Farrell are doing their best within the confines of the script. Robbie’s Sarah is burdened with the bulk of the film’s narrative heavy lifting—reliving loss, confronting betrayal, and finally, opening herself to connection. Robbie imbues her with moments of charm and weariness, but the dialogue often undercuts her efforts. Farrell fares slightly better, grounding David in a melancholy that feels lived-in, even if his backstory is thinner than it should be. The two have moments of real chemistry—an impromptu karaoke scene, a lingering glance at sunset—but their dynamic never quite transcends the movie’s artificiality.

Supporting players like Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater barely register, while Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline pop in like spirit guides but disappear before they can leave an impression. These are excellent actors, wasted in roles that feel less like people and more like mood board archetypes: “The Wistful Ex,” “The Ghost of Regret,” “The Surprising Mentor.”

At its core, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey wants to be a meditation on healing, on how love and memory intersect, and how emotional growth often requires revisiting the moments we most want to forget. But instead of earning that insight through messiness or surprise, the film settles for clean resolutions and fortune-cookie profundities. It’s less a story than a treatment for a story.

This is most evident in the third act, where Sarah and David confront their “final doors.” Their traumas are confronted not with tension, but with narrative convenience. Years of regret dissolve with a hug. Lifelong fears are cured by an epiphany in a motel parking lot. Even the central metaphor—the GPS as life’s unseen guide—becomes overused and under-explained. What begins as a whimsical conceit ends up feeling like narrative hand-holding.

POPULAR ON THE CINEMA GROUP

Still, there’s something admirable about a film that swings this big. In an industry increasingly risk-averse, it’s refreshing to see a major studio release a deeply emotional, non-IP story for adults. The fact that this exists at all is something of a miracle. But A Big Bold Beautiful Journey doesn’t trust the audience enough to let them get lost in its world. It lays out every beat, every theme, and every “aha!” moment with the subtlety of a blinking road sign.

What’s most frustrating is that underneath the layers of visual sugar and emotional shorthand, you can see glimpses of a better film—a rawer, more complex version that isn’t afraid to sit in discomfort, to let characters contradict themselves, to show love as something messier and more unpredictable. But Kogonada’s version wants too badly to inspire. It wants to be profound. And in doing so, it forgets that real feeling isn’t found in metaphors—it’s found in the space between them.

In a key scene, Sarah stares out the car window and says, “I keep thinking there’s something just around the bend.” The line is meant to be hopeful. But it’s also emblematic of the film itself—always reaching, never arriving.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Credits

Release Date: September 19, 2025 | Sony Pictures

Cast: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kevin Kline

Creators: Director: Kogonada | Writer: Seth Reiss

Theatrical Release: Nationwide

Rating: R

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