A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a clunky title for this fantasty adventure that’s rather less than the sum of its parts.
David’s (Colin Farrell – The Penguin) trying to get to a wedding 250 miles away, but with his car out of action, he chances upon a rental agency with a weird mechanic (Kevin Kline – The Starling) an unconventional cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who helped ruin Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny), trying to buzz him in through their broken front door, exclaiming initially, “Hold on a fucking minute”.
As it turns out, Sarah (Margot Robbie – Babylon), living in the same city as David, also has to follow the same path as him, but is initially surprisingly cold towards him when they do meet. Perhaps that’s do differentiate it from the typical “Love is nice” Hollywood movies we normally get?
They do briefly chat later, but it doesn’t amount to much, so David’s on the road again, on the way home the next day, with the GPS (Jodie Turner-Smith – Murder Mystery 2) asking him if he wants to go on… a big bold beautiful journey, and tells him to take an upcoming exit, where he chances across Margot again, at a Burger King, because that’s the place to go for a hot date.
However, this scene does highlight the difference between men and women, because men, correctly, men REVERSE into a car park space, while women drive INTO the space. Men are right, because it makes it easier for leaving, instead of having to faff about reversing and seeing who else is around one you’re setting off to leave.
The only exception is at the supermarket, because you have to put all the food in the boot. They should really find a way to flip cars 180-degrees.
Anyhoo, with rather forced circumstances bringing them together, they head through a handful of doors in the middle of nowhere, such as a red door leads to a 19th Century preserved lighthouse, and one for David’s school, with him reliving a school play, when he took the lead as J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I wasn’t familiar with that, so the few minutes we spent in this ‘world’ was actually one of the highlights of the film, because it was so outlandish.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a middling drama about confronting past situations in life, although where the film falls down is that it’s more a case of “let’s go from A to B to C… etc, not really do a lot, and then move on”.
I saw elements of Quantum Leap, It’s A Wonderful Life and L.A. Story in there, the latter being that the GPS is giving instructions, compared to Steve Martin’s film where he was told what to do by a motorway sign, but while the two well-known leads are making the best of the material, it ends up just passing an okay near-two hours, but is nothing you’ll really want to watch again.
There’s also a continuity error in one scene where late on, a woman passes David a box across a table, but it disappears from the next camera cut and never reappears. If he was meant to put it away, they never showed that.
But once again, we have my bugbear of a director – Kogonada (who) – shooting this film in a 2.00:1 aspect ratio, a ratio that doesn’t fit ANY cinema screen. The same thing was the case with Ms Robbie’s Barbie, too. On any screen, the film is within a 1.85:1 container, so is projected as if it was a 1.85:1 film, and if it’s on a 2.39:1 screen, the image is effectively windowboxed with black bars all the way round and looks a mess.
That would be the case at my local Odeon, since it was showing on such a screen, and normally, since I’m on Limitless, I’d go and watch it there, but as it was the only film I wanted to see this weekend that they were showing, and as it’s cheaper to pay £3 for a Three+ ticket at my local Cineworld, than to drive to the Odeon, I went there. It was also a plus that my Cineworld was showing A Big Bold Beautiful Journey on a 1.85:1 screen, so it suited it much better.
Still, if you do go and see this, do it ASAP, because it’s bombing on the big screen. I can see why, even with Ms Robbie and Mr Farrell, but it’s leaving my Odeon after one week, and sticking around for reduced screenings at Cineworld.
Additionally, I’d read some clickbait crap about there being numerous complaints about “blatant Burger King product placement“, as if they’d gone to that place multiple times, but no, it’s just the once. It must’ve been the Daily Mail.
Now, there was another film I wanted to see at Cineworld, so had to go because Odeon weren’t showing it… the 60th Anniversary for The Sound of Music. That was also on a 1.85:1 screen, and I figured that as the film is shot in 2.20:1, it would be placed within a 2.39:1 container, so would’ve been better on a 2.39:1 screen.
However, when it came to the screening, it was all within a 1.85:1 container because the 20th Century Fox/Cinemark added some pointless crap at the start with a trivia quiz and some stills from the film, telling us to get out phones out and take a picture and tweet about it! This comes at the time when Cineworld staff normally come round with their infra-red glasses to check if someone’s filming the screen!
Anyway, I didn’t see anyone take out their phone, but they could’ve put this within a 2.39:1 container and shown it on the bigger screen. Would’ve made more sense. I then wondered if there were two versions made for this intro, depending upon which screen it was shown, but no. I saw someone on Reddit state they’d seen it on a 2.39:1 screen, and thus, when the film started, it ended up windowboxed and looked shite.
NOTE: There is both a mid-credits and post-credits scene/moment, as per the video below.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
You can buy the novel on Kindle and Paperback.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 109 minutes
Release date: September 19th 2025
Studio: Focus Features
Aspect ratio: 2.00:1 (ARRIRAW (4.6K))
cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 6/10
Director: Kogonada (real name: Park Joong Eun, the pretentious twat)
Producers: Ryan Friedkin, Youree Henley, Seth Reiss, Bradley Thomas
Screenplay: Seth Reiss
Music: Joe Hisaishi
Cast:
David: Colin Farrell
Sarah: Margot Robbie
David’s Mother: Jennifer Grant
David’s Father: Hamish Linklater
Female Cashier: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
The Mechanic: Kevin Kline
GPS: Jodie Turner-Smith
Amanda: Lucy Thomas
Stacy Dunn: Jacqueline Novak
Vincent: Pablo Soriano
Sarah’s mother: Lily Rabe
The Man: Billy Magnussen
The Woman: Sarah Gadon
Mike: Brandon Perea
Cheryl: Chloe East
Sarah’s Groomsman: Calahan Skogman
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.