A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) * *

Directed by:  Kogonada

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

Barbie, starring Margot Robbie as the title character, was a worldwide blockbuster.  If Margot Robbie continues to star in flops like A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (no commas), that goodwill will be erased.  That's Hollywood.  It isn't necessarily Robbie's fault, because the camera adores her like fewer actresses in cinema history, nor is the fault of Farrell, whose character Dave exudes likability and charm.  The movie itself wants to be a whimsical fantasy in which two people fall in love while on the Big Bold Beautiful Journey of the title, but it's a slog with its two protagonists fighting love every step of the way.

Farrell's Dave is a bland, single guy who takes care of his ailing father and has a lifetime of hurts which make him unwilling him to truly give himself to another person.  Robbie's Sarah is a woman whose mother died years ago, but yet is still in stagnation on the relationship front because she's the type who will hurt you before you hurt her.   For reasons that are supposed to be grounded in fantasy but are tiresome, the two wind up renting old Saturns at a bizarre car rental agency.  The Saturns are installed with a GPS that gives directions not only to your destination, but other aspects of your life.  Dave and Sarah attend the same wedding and flirt with each other, as two single people are wont to do, but they don't act on it.  If they had, then there would be no need for the Big Bold Beautiful Journey and that would've been just fine.

Before Dave and Sarah can admit to being in love, they travel to woodlands where a single red door is constructed in the middle of nowhere, and each must walk through it to confront the pain of their pasts before they can forge a path forward.  A Big Bold Beautiful Journey wants to be loved with every fiber of its being.  It wants to be Deep, Moving, and Offbeat, but I couldn't help but be reminded of the comedic twist in LA Story (1991), in which Steve Martin encounters a freeway traffic sign which gives him life advice at a time he desperately needs it.  A Big Bold... is that scene from LA Story over and over again.