With Margot Robbie coming off the cultural phenomenon of “Barbie” and Colin Farrell fresh from his acclaimed turn in “The Penguin,” the pairing of these two actors should have been a fall movie event. Yet “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” directed by Kogonada and written by Seth Reiss, arrives with little fanfare, its marketing nearly invisible and its storytelling unable to rise to the stature of its cast.
The film, scheduled to be released by Sony Pictures Releasing on September 19, 2025, sets itself up as a romantic fantasy. The premise is straightforward enough: two strangers, Sarah (Robbie) and David (Farrell), find themselves tied together by an unimaginable journey. With Kogonada known for his precise visual style in “Columbus” and “After Yang,” and Reiss coming off the sharp satire of “The Menu,” the expectation was for something inventive and memorable.
The film opens with a glimmer of intrigue. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline play the proprietors of a small-town rental car agency where David picks up a 1994 Saturn equipped with a vintage GPS. Waller-Bridge’s appearance injects the film with wit and presence, and the setup introduces its central metaphor: timing, open doors, and missed opportunities. A moment of meta-humor follows, with David declaring he is not an actor after noticing one of his headshots on their table. It is a clever touch, but one that also underscores the film’s wavering identity. Is this a romantic fable, a surreal comedy, or a self-aware riff on performance itself?
From there, David attends a wedding under a torrent of rain, a recurring, not-so-subtle motif. Sarah arrives in the exact same rental car, and though the two exchange weighty dialogue about why they are alone, the encounter feels overwritten and artificial. They don’t leave together, but fate intervenes when David’s GPS directs him to a fast-food stop, where Sarah just happens to be eating. It is here their journey begins, steered by the mysterious GPS and a series of magical doors that deposit them back into pivotal moments of their past.
The premise has potential, but the execution falters. The conceit of reliving formative traumas to understand one another could have unlocked emotional depth. Instead, it plays out as a sequence of contrived revelations, stitched together with dialogue that rarely resembles anything real people might say. Robbie and Farrell, both skilled at bringing nuance to flawed characters, are left stranded. Their supposed romance is built less on chemistry than on circumstance, as if sharing flashbacks is sufficient reason to fall in love.
The film’s biggest problem is its refusal to interrogate its own conceit. Neither character questions the origin or purpose of the GPS, nor the logic of these doors. Instead, the story asks us to accept its whimsy as explanation enough. By the time David and Sarah profess their love, the sentiment feels unearned, the journey arbitrary. A third-act twist, whether purgatory, a dreamscape, or an allegory of grief, might have grounded the fable. Instead, the story offers nothing, and the lack of resolution leaves the narrative hollow.
There will be audiences, particularly hopeless romantics, who may be willing to embrace the film on its theatrical terms. The heightened dialogue and metaphor-heavy staging could even work better on stage, where audiences expect symbolism to trump realism. As cinema, though, the film struggles to justify its choices.
For a project with this much talent, the result is deeply disappointing. “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” promises magic but delivers muddle.
Letter grade: C-.