The romantic film is a Hollywood staple but struggles these days without being served with hot sauce. Snappily-cast “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” (Columbia Pictures), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, gamely tries to rise above a bland boy-meets-girl love story, but sooner or later struggles under the weight of a stiff screenplay and risk-averse plotting.
Sarah and David, played by Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, meet at a mutual friend’s wedding. She proposes to him—while wearing pyjamas—five minutes or so after they first meet. He refuses; but, driving home, on the suggestion of a G.P.S. system installed in their respective rental cars, they agree to embark upon a big bold beautiful journey which leads to love. Their first date is in a fast-food restaurant (the producers are very grateful to Burger King for their assistance, according to the end credits). After arranging for one of their vehicles not to start (much of the movie feels like a commercial for motorcars), the G.P.S. directs them to one out-of-the-way place after another where a mysterious “Alice-in-Wonderland”-like door appears. Each opens to a pivotal episode in the past which illustrates an emotional vulnerability, or a moment of regret, or provides a clue to their romantic behaviour—his school, her art-gallery sanctuary, both childhood homes.
She understands what retaliating first is all about, habitually cheating on her partners before they can cheat on her; he “relentlessly chase(s) after people,” then later develops cold feet. Sarah decides mid-way through the movie that “it’s just … not worth the risk for me.” But, as David points out, this conclusion makes no sense at all—she has already proposed to him by this point. It’s hard at times to see beyond fatal weaknesses like this—and the trite screenplay, which could have done with a complete rewrite: “Why are you so certain we’re going to hurt each other;” “You are capable of being content in this life;” “I think we could be content together … and in love;” “We have to perform to get to the truth … sometimes pain is good.” And so on.
Nevertheless, the episodic structure enforced by the sets of doors maintains our interest, and a fascinating but under-explored subplot lurks outside the script. The first door opens onto a lively backdrop of David’s high-school musical, “back when I knew that everything would work out for me.” The idea of life playing out on a stage isn’t new; but the combination of the adult David begging his childhood sweetheart to choose him, the multiple camera angles required to show us the on- and off-stage participants, and the reactions of his overjoyed mother and somewhat disappointed father is particularly successful, and I found myself wanting the show to continue. A much later scene where twelve-year-old Sarah is “role-playing” an adult conversation with her mum is lifted by the fruitful decision to shoot the sofa on which they are both sitting from behind. This affords the moment greater intimacy as we just see their heads in profile as they talk to each other.
The only occasion that combines experiences is set in a cafe where both David and Sarah are splitting up from their respective ex-es. In efficiently placing the two couples around a single round table, like bridge partners, and intertwining excerpts of the break-up conversation from each, David and Sarah develop at the same time and at the same pace. According to their memories, some of the conversation is a faithful transcription of what took place. But much of it is not—instead, it is designed to enable predictions of any future romantic partnership to be made by the audience. For instance, David responds to a question, “Why did you lose interest in me, David,” from his fiancée with, “You will never make me happy.” But after she replies, “That’s very, very cruel,” David tells Sarah (and the audience) that that conversation never actually happened. Sarah remarks at the end, astutely, “We’re good at destroying things.” “Apparently,” David replies.
The other afternoon, as I started to write, it came to me that the more daring film buried inside “A Big Beautiful Journey” is either a science-fiction or a psychological-horror. Either would have a love story embedded at its heart. Magical doors opening into the past, art-gallery paintings that can be walked into and inhabited, rooms without walls, hazy recollections, partial truths, historical events both real and not real at the same time. Is it autobiography or fiction? And behind it all is a presence, a spectre, haunting all their yesterdays—gathering information, seizing on any useful fragments from the past, mixing and multiplying moments of emotional defencelessness—negatively curating them to manipulate a relationship into being. The G.P.S.—artificial intelligence. A computer that knows more about us than we do. Serving up our past to us on a plate from different partially-remembered vignettes, group photographs, or—these days—home videos, is precisely how A.I. feeds and stimulates us. When both of them ask to be let out of the computer’s game—they both seem tired by this point—they are taken to the right address but the wrong year. Computer knows best.
Meanwhile, Columbia Pictures offer us an after-dinner coffee in the form of the fascinating roll of production credits. As well as the “fast-food restaurant” above, there is a credit for the “Spray-tan Artist,” and another for “Product Placement”—which no doubt relates, in part, to the lavish worship of the motorcar. At least they are honest about it.
“You got one more door in you?” David asks Sarah towards the end. “I could do one more door,” she says. But it is the computer whose permission Sarah really needs: “Is this my destination?” she asks the G.P.S. “It depends, Sarah,” it replies, ominously.
Adam Poole
23rd September 2025
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