David's (Colin Farrell) car gets booted on the day of a big wedding. It’s not his wedding, but somebody whom the film isn’t interested in elaborating on. Anyway, a convenient dealership, The Car Rental Agency, shows up in a back alley. Its two clerks, The Cashier and the Mechanic (Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline), run the place like a casting agency (they have David’s headshots, for reasons), and The Cashier casts David as a Saturn driver (because that's all they have).
David meets Sarah (Margot Robbie) at the wedding, but nothing happens between them. On the drive home, David's talking GPS (Jodie Turner-Smith), who has a very familiar interface, asks him if he wants to go on A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. He agrees, and he gets redirected to Sarah at a gas station Burger King. Sarah, who also rented from the TCRA, gets car trouble, so she hitches a ride with David.
The GPS redirects them to magical doors that take them to specific points in their lives. For instance, David gets to relive the night he crushed it in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which is also when his crush crushed his heart. Everyone sees David as he was, but we see him as he is now. The same goes for Sarah in her door worlds. Their past hangups threaten to tear them apart, but there's a happy ending for them.
Did everybody get all that?
Because this isn't a film that explains much. In fact, its world-building is often done with proudly vague and generalized dialogue. David and Sarah's romantic flakiness is exposited with outlines, not dialogue. Stuff like the TCRA and the unnamed city is like a genre savvy movie parody. Yet, the film also wants to be a serious romantic drama. One minute, Sarah is ready to pump the breaks on their relationship because David doesn't really know her, or something. The next, they get in car trouble and stay at the "Timely Inn" (which is an admittedly amusing detour). We get vague hints of the TCRA's true purpose, but we have no real idea who they are. Even Big, which factors into Sarah's past, has hints of something bigger with its unplugged fortune teller machine. What I'm getting at is that the tonal confusion makes it a little hard to get invested in the central relationship.
It's a little easier to get into Kogonada's directing flourishes. The cinematography by Benjamin Loeb gives us some pretty scenery, both real and fantastical. The sky adorning the couple's first stop, a lighthouse, is overly romantic and nice to look at. Farrell's musical prowess in How to Succeed's opening number is a pleasant surprise; between that and the staging, here's hoping he and Kogonada do more musicals. Its sweet, sentimental score is nice to listen to, but the fact that it is by Studio Ghibli's favorite composer, Joe Hisaishi, in his first American film, is the film's biggest surprise.
Amongst the supporting cast, a few highlights are actual couple Hamish Linklater & Lily Rabe, who play David's dad and Sarah's mom. They each get a scene where their respective kids talk to them in the door worlds. David gives his dad some needed moral support in his door world, and Sarah's mom gives her some in hers. Granted, the circumstances confuse an already confused plot, but the two of them make the most of their moments. Another confusing, yet decent moment, is when David suddenly becomes his dad and consoles himself (Yuvi Hecht) in another door world. I can go on, but I can't.
If you think this movie is for you, feel free to go on A Big Beautiful Journey to your local cineplex. You should probably hurry before it gets crowded out. Late in act two, David and Sarah, on a "break" from their journey, hike up to the moon (because, of course). Both comment that the experience is "beautifully strange," and "strangely beautiful;" either way they phrase it, that's what I think of this movie.
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