A Big Bold Beautiful Journey review: Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell romantic drama leaves desire at the door

Once upon a time – AKA not that long ago – romantic drama was a formidable genre on the big screen.

We swooned over the grand love stories in The Notebook, The Way We Were and The English Patient, feeling all the feelings, as if we too were Debra Winger being swept up in the arms of Richard Gere while the music swells to a crescendo.

In a well-executed romantic drama, the ending doesn’t have to be happy, but the emotions are big, and you go along with it even when it seems unrealistic.

With the exception of the truly excellent Past Lives, it seemed as if recent attempt in the genre featured either characters under 25 or someone dying – preferably both.

So, maybe the problem is we’re out of practice when a new one lands on our doorstep, and we don’t quite know what to do with the overt sentimentality and earnestness.

Or maybe, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey just isn’t very good.

Starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, the film is directed by Kogonada from a script by Seth Reiss, and with a superb support cast that includes Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kevin Kline, Jodie Turner-Smith, Billy Magnussen and Lily Rabe.

That all looks good on paper, but the real thing is less impressive.

Blending romance drama and magic realism, the film is about David (Farrell) and Sarah (Robbie), two strangers who live in the same city and encounter each other at the wedding of a mutual friend.

The wedding meet-cute is a time-honoured tradition in literature and cinema, but what really connects them is their mode of transportation. Specifically, they have both rented cars from an odd agency which have only two vehicles – a mid-90s Saturn sedan equipped with a GPS that resembles an old Nintendo controller.

When Sarah’s car breaks down, she and David road trip together but the journey becomes a strange one as the seemingly sentient GPS takes them to a series of disembodied doors that act as passageways to moments from their past – a lighthouse in Canada, a modern art gallery, a diner.

One sequence takes David back to the night of his high school musical in which he has the lead role in a production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. It was also the night he professed his love to his crush, who rejected him.

It’s a blow that he has carried with him all these years and along with revelations about his parents’ marriage and his other past romances, explain why he’s now such a commitment-phobe.

Sarah too has been burdened by her history, resulting in a tendency to cut-and-run in relationships before they can hurt her.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is about how these two people can reckon with their past to identify and overcome why they’re so, as they used to say, unlucky in love – and be open to being vulnerable with someone else.

Yes, it’s essentially a convoluted interactive therapy session that, if it were a Black Mirror episode or even 10 years into our future, would’ve been accessed through VR goggles or just a little white dot attached our temples.

But cinematically, the doors are a visually arresting if not obvious metaphor.

There are moments here and there that pique your interest, but the film is laden with schmaltz without offering anything that hasn’t already been pinned to thousands of Pinterest boards. Live, laugh, love!

Robbie and Farrell are also not a persuasive match on screen. They’re both charismatic and talented, to be sure, but their chemistry never quite sparks, so you’re not rooting for them in the same way as, say, Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas or Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga.

In a romantic drama, if you don’t buy into the potential happily ever after of your two leads, what’s even the point? Add to that some pacing issues (it’s so slow) and cloying dialogue.

American filmmaker Kogonada’s first film Columbus was a thoughtful treatise on love and architecture and while at times it was meditative to the point of sleepy, it was, on the whole, artful and inquisitive.

After Yang, which also starred Farrell, was more flawed but even in its imperfection, it explored themes of memory and loss with nuance.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey was definitely going for something raw but it didn’t even get close.

Rating: 2/5

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is in cinemas