Written by Sam Clark 

Certificate: 15

Running time: 109 minutes

Director: Kogonada

Cinema has always been a vessel for escapism, to leave the real world behind (and all of the problems and darkness it leaves in it's wake) and travel to land of imagination. Despite not working as well as you would want, as well as it should, or as well as it thinks it does, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is ultimately such a lovely film to watch with everything going on in the world right now. So flaws aside, it is important to zoom out, have some perspective and just enjoy watching something nice. 

From Korean/American filmmaker Kogonada whose work can best be described as spiritual and fantastical, and writer Seth Reiss who penned 2022's The Menu starring Ralph Fiennes. Collin Farrell and Margot Robbie star as David and Sarah, two troubled individuals who meet at a wedding after both have visited the same mystical and mysterious car rental agency, run by Kevin Cline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. They cross paths and lock eyes. After engaging in friendly but flirtatious chat during the event, they both decide to go their separate ways. David is driving back and all of a sudden his car's GPS begins to talk to him, and simply asks him: ''would you like to go on a big bold beautiful journey?''. He contemplates for a few seconds and says yes. 

He stops by a Burger King, where he bumps into Robbie once again. They pick up where they last left off, and end up taking a journey together through their past through mysterious doors that appear from nowhere along their journey, reliving the beauty but also the hardships. When you say fantastical romantic drama, most will instantly think of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as the high water mark. The only difference here is that Eternal Sunshine was able to get away with it's central idea and concept, whereas A Big Bold Beautiful Journey does not and as a result you are left having to buy into a lot of what it's trying to do. Not only is that one battle the film has and loses, but when you consider just how many time travel romances there have been (most of which have been done better), this just makes it worse. About Time, Midnight in Paris and Palm Springs are all worth more of your time. 

Inevitably, there also lies the usual logic issue time travel cinema faces, for example, your old self pretending to be younger and how no one reacts to the fact it's an older version of you (Back to the future of course being the most famous example to address this). Needless to say, there is a fair amount of suspension of disbelief here that may turn some away. Not only does the film called to to mind the aforementioned titles, but much to my surprise I was reminded quite a lot of Inside No.9 and Black Mirror. Anything that does that is a win for me. However, it is nowhere near as quirky as those are, and for a dreamlike piece of imaginative romance, you could go as far to say it's not strange enough as a whole for what it is. Kevin Cline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge do get to to flex their comedic muscles, but after their scene is finished, the film returns to a much more straight faced story, and simply abandons the comedy almost instantly. It's all a little misjudged, undecided and off-balance, and one of those cases in which there are a couple films in one here. In the same way as Farrell and Robbie experience things, I suppose I also came away rather bewildered. 

In cinemas now.