Producers: Bradley Thomas, Ryan Friedkin, Youree Henley and Seth Reiss Director: Kogonada Screenplay: Seth Reiss Cast: Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Kevin Kline, Billy Magnussen, Sarah Gadon, Yuvi Hecht, Jodie Turner-Smith, Shelby Simmons, Jennifer Grant, Chloe East, Jacqueline Novak, Julian Zane, Simon Khan and Jason Kravits Distributor: Sony Entertainment/Columbia Pictures
Grade: D+
A failed romantasy that aims to warm the cockles of your heart but will likely leave you cold, Kogonada’s “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” is a piece of cloying claptrap built on a feeble premise and played out much too lethargically to sustain a willing suspension of disbelief. Instead it encourages an attitude of annoyance over its pretentious bombardment of banal life lessons.
The magical catalyst for the supposedly revelatory titular trip is, if you’re willing to swallow the conceit, the GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) in a car rented by sad sack David (Colin Farrell) after he finds his own misparked one rendered inoperative by a boot. Serendipitously noticing a sign for a car rental joint staring at him on the sidewalk, he goes to its address in a heavy downpour (it seems to pour regularly in the movie, though people rarely get soaked, leaving that to paying viewers) and finds a couple (a screeching, wacky woman played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her quiet elderly companion played by Kevin Kline) alone at a table in a cavernous, otherwise empty room.
Anyone with half a brain would exit immediately, but David obligingly goes through a nutty application process and rents the car. He then drives it several hundred miles from the city where he attends a wedding (in the rain, again—there’s an umbrellas-from-above scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent,” where it had a point) and meets Sarah (Margot Robbie), a sprightly, sharp-tongued woman who, it turns out, rented a car from the same joint. Destiny has intervened, though they don’t immediately click, since both are commitment-phobic.
The magical GPS brings them together again over cheeseburgers at a diner on their way back to the city, and when Sarah’s car in the deserted parking lot won’t start, it suggests that David gift her a lift. Oh, the force of fate!
Their joint journey now takes them to a series of doors set up in the middle of nowhere, and by going through them they’re taken back to moments in their past or made-up scenarios that are designed to confront their psychological hang-ups. Thus Sarah will be faced by several episodes with her late mother (Lily Rabe) whose death she was unable to accept at the time, giving her finally some sense of closure. David will be taken back to the high school musical where he was rebuffed after confessing his love for his co-star; he’ll also comfort his father (Hamish Linklater) in the hospital waiting room where his dad was worrying about his (David’s) premature birth, as well as adopting his father’s persona to comfort his own younger self (Yuvi Hecht, oddly making no effort to mimic Farrell’s Irish accent) after that ego-shattering high school rejection.
There’s also a contrived ensemble moment when David and Sarah pass through the entrance of a coffee shop to tell their respective dates (Sarah Gordon and Billy Magnussen) that they’re breaking up with them. Oh, how the traumas of their pasts are blocking their ability to connect with others in the here and now!
All of this is presented with leaden sincerity by Kogonada, who seems to think that what the film is saying is deep and profound and whose attempts to introduce humor (as in the scene in the car-rental place) fall utterly flat. The tone is fatal to the performances of Farrell and Robbie; his dour demeanor is rarely interrupted, while the dichotomy between her ordinary pose of cynical chirpiness and her depressed flashback desperation comes across as totally phony. The film does look pretty: Katie Byron’s production design and Arjan Bhasin’s costumes are fine, and Benjamin Loeb’s widescreen cinematography is attractive enough, even in the multiple rainy sequences. But the editing by Jonathan Alberts and Susan E. Kim accentuates the sluggishness of Kogonada’s direction, and Joe Hisaishi’s score can’t alleviate the lack of real magic on display on the screen.
There’s one thing of merit in the movie, though: the high school musical Farrell and Robbie are called on to recreate in part, even if the conceit is clumsy, is Frank Loesser’s “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and the excerpt reminds you how delightful a show it is. If that prompts some to revisit David Swift’s underrated 1967 film of it (his last feature, as it turned out), the picture will have done some good.
Otherwise, the one door you’re sure to appreciate after watching Kogonada’s piece of saccharine slop is the one reading “Exit” in the megaplex auditorium.