Don Reviews "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey"

Just about everyone has certain events and decisions in their past that truly affect them for the rest of their lives; for me, one of those was deciding where to live once I graduated from college.  No matter what I chose, I knew that I would still wonder what would have happened if I chose a different path, and the new film A Big Bold Beautiful Journey explores this to a degree.

Kogonada (After Yang) directs here with a cast that includes Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Kevin Kline.  David (Farrell) lives alone and seems to be okay with how his life is going.  When he has to rent a car to drive to an out-of-town wedding from a strange rental company, that sets off a series of events that lead him to looking at his life alongside a stranger he meets there in Sarah (Robbie).  As their stories unfiled, they are faced not only with their own thoughts and insecurities but also with each other’s.

I am somewhat conflicted on this one: Farrell and Robbie have good chemistry, being able to convey how their characters know about their complicated pasts and understand what it may take to get past them but are afraid to.  With award season beginning, I can see that there could be some nominations when that time comes, even though I think there are others that have a better chance to win.  This story is unique in now it has its message come across, and I thought that was interesting as well.

On the other hand, as I started to feel for the characters, the script kept having them stall in their growth over and over again.  There were a number of moments where I just thought to myself “enough already” while the story kept on trying to sabotage their relationship.  There is also about twenty minutes that could have been edited out of its almost two hour run time to make it more interesting, mostly from a tangent they took that I did not understand.  Since I had those mixed feelings here, I can only recommend A Big Bold Beautiful Journey to be seen on a home streaming service.