It’s rare for me to watch a trailer and think, “That movie was made for me.” The last time this happened was early 2023 with the film Past Lives. I like romance, I like sentimentality, and more than anything, I like a touch of sci-fi/fantasy thrown into the mix. When I saw the trailer for A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, I knew I was in for a movie that would check all my boxes. It can be daunting to go into a movie with the expectation that it will become an all-time favorite of yours. So I went into my screening after a long press event expecting my favorite movie of the year, and what I got was pretty close.
This is the most emotional movie of the year. It’s sweet, tender, and oh so romantic. And as I scroll through my list of 120+ new films I’ve seen this year, I’m realizing this is one of the only movies that made me cry this much. It’s a powerful tearjerker that will stick with you and make you recall the beauty of life. It can be a challenge to find joy in a world riddled with pain. Lately, I’ve been putting a conscious effort to hold onto happiness, and movies like A Big Bold Beautiful Journey are a significant part of what keeps me going.
The movie establishes David (Colin Farrell) and Sarah (Margot Robbie), two single people who meet at a wedding. The opening act is quite peculiar in all the best ways. You quickly get a sense of the film’s eccentricities as David rents a car from two mysterious individuals played by Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. The GPS begins to speak to him, offering to take him on a—well, you know the title. Sarah experiences the same. And from there, two strangers become something far greater in an adventure filled with beauty of the highest order.
This movie is exceptional. It’s funny in an offbeat way, while offering powerful cinematography. Director Kogonada, who previously worked with Farrell on After Yang, crafted a one-of-a-kind experience here. He and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb create symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing framing and a color palette that really pops. There’s a warm, cozy feel to this movie that also feels dreamlike. It’s a fantasy movie that grounds itself in human scenarios, so the cinematography matches that style by allowing everything to look just a tiny bit too perfect to resemble real life.
The locations and production design are pristine. The premise surrounds David and Sarah in a car with their GPS leading them to doors in the middle of nowhere. It’s the kind of idea we’ve seen in Monsters, Inc. and Suzume. But when David and Sarah open these doors, the doors lead them to places in their past. David enters his old high school the night that he confesses his love to a girl who doesn’t love him back. Sarah enters a museum that she used to go to with her now-deceased mother. As they explore their old traumatic memories, they learn more about each other.
At the core of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is two people learning about each other and finding out if they can connect. We learn a lot about them both, and that’s what’s so masterful about writer Seth Reiss’s screenplay. You get to know them as people, so even if you don’t agree with all of the choices they’ve made in their past, you grow to care deeply about them. The two characters have a connection, but you get the sense that their past romantic experiences have traumatized them enough to make them avoid taking the leap. For example, Sarah reveals early on that she has a cheating habit. While it’s easy to villainize people who cheat, this movie approaches her with a lot of nuance, and you end up sympathizing with her a lot.
Farrell and Robbie are two of the greatest actors working today. Farrell recently turned in unrecognizable villainous work in The Penguin, and this is Robbie’s first role since Barbie. They manage to be funny and charming in this film, but the script demands a lot from an emotional perspective. Their characters are facing the moments in their past that they regret the most. By exploring old wounds, they find the opportunity to heal in ways they didn’t get to the first time. And only by learning from the past can they create a better future for themselves. The movie can be heavy-handed in its sentimentality, but it also knows how to throw in a joke at the right time.
We get a lot of development with them and their relationships with their parents. The final act shifts the focus slightly away from David and Sarah’s relationship with each other and goes more for the parental aspect. Sarah’s scenes had me in tears. They were perfectly written. But the film cuts back and forth between Sarah and David, and while David’s scenes have their impact, they’re funnier than Sarah’s, and not as tear-jerking as a result. But overall, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey did nearly everything right. Strong characters, humor, deep emotion, a swoon-worthy romance, and an ending that will resonate with many, particularly those who have lost a parent.
This is everything movies should be.
SCORE: 9/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 9 equates to “Excellent.” Entertainment that reaches this level is at the top of its type. The gold standard that every creator aims to reach.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our A Big Bold Beautiful Journey review.
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