Nearly a month ago, I caught up with an old romantic fantasy called Somewhere in Time from 1980.
As I have always been a fan of time travel, I managed to overlook the questionable approach to that phenomenon because the leads (Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour) had such palpable chemistry and the John Barry score was enjoyably hypnotic.
The new film A Big Bold Beautiful Journey stars two talented A listers in Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie (the score, for the record, is by the great Joe Hisaishi of Studio Ghibli fame). Somehow, these two powerhouse talents are able to have very little chemistry on screen.
The film is directed by Kogonada, whose previous films include Columbus and After Yang (also starring Farrell). I have not seen those films, but after this one, I can say safely that this guy definitely knows how to shoot a scene. The film does have some true images that invoke the “beautiful” in the title. It is where the script goes that does not work, as we meet David (Farrell), a loner who ends up meeting Sarah (Robbie) at a mutual friend’s wedding.
Through circumstances that are not very clear involving a rent a car place and a not so subtle GPS system, they find themselves going into past memories of why they have their own personal issues before they inevitably fall in love (if that is a spoiler, sorry. It seemed obvious to me).
This idea had to have sounded great on paper, but man does the transition to screen not work. Each of these past memories are random doors set out in the open (we don’t entirely know where this takes place, which I guess is okay). We get scenes (again, nicely shot) including where David has to relive being the lead in his High School Musical (the jury is still out on if I was okay with the leads playing younger versions of themselves as the extras don’t notice they have aged at all), a scene in a hospital where both encounter individual events that baffled me, and others I won’t get into.
Okay, I have to admit something: not only during this movie did I feel like parts were cut out (I can’t think of any other explanation as to how we get from one place to another so suddenly), but I am legit sitting here, trying to remember a scene after the aforementioned High School segment, and I simply can’t (and no, I was asleep).
Parents, the film is rated R mainly for swearing, nothing else.
Farrell and Robbie have strong enough careers to survive this, as will Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, despite having superfluous roles (Waller-Bridge is using a truly weird accent here).
Basically, I could sense the “bold” and “beautiful” ambitions the film was trying to accomplish, but the result is a door off its hinges.
Overall:
Nothing else to say 