Let it be known: I recoiled more times during “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” than at “House of 1000 Corpses.”
movie review
A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY
Zero Stars. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (language). In theaters.
You’d have to be a Roomba not to wince when Colin Farrell sings the title song of the Broadway musical “How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.”
Come to think of it, the words “Without Really Trying” suit this moldy cupcake of a movie splendidly.
Director Kogonada’s adjective-challenged romantic blahmedy starring Farrell and Margot Robbie is a work of magical realism — though that’s giving it too much credit — about two sexy singletons who meet at a rain-soaked wedding, and embark on a road trip through time to relive their quite unremarkable pasts.
Their car’s full-of-BS GPS, voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith, primly asks Farrell’s David, “Would you like to go on a big, bold, beautiful journey?”
Tell me that’s not worse than a serial-killer clown?
“Yes,” dull David says.
So, off Sarah (Robbie) and David trek to a series of forgettable forests and fields, in the middle of which stand out-of-place doorways. The vacuous vessels of boredom step through the frames and into their mushy memories.
Farrell croons the Frank Loesser tune because he’s whisked back to his high-school musical and a girl he fell in love with there. Speaking from experience, there are few things more mind-numbing than when grown adults wax nostalgic about their high-school musical.
It’s a mystery how Farrell wound up in the driver’s seat here. The Irish actor is at his finest in the dark films of directors such as Martin McDonagh and Yorgos Lanthimos. And sometimes he injects danger into unexpected places. For instance, Farrell managed to be brooding in “Saving Mr. Banks,” a Disney film about the creation of “Mary Poppins.”
In “Journey,” however, Farrell does not fare well. The annoying movie sands away his edges and thus his magnetism. He fades away.
Sarah plain and tall visits a modern art museum that she cherished but is bittersweet because her mom, whose death Sarah was absent for, also loved it. Her story is more one-note than David’s.
Robbie, who plays a sort of manic pixie dream girl on beta blockers, suffers from the same unmoving, automaton quality as her costar. Though with the “Barbie” actress the poor showing is less of a letdown. She hasn’t been truly great in a role since “I, Tonya” eight years ago.
Both manilla lovebirds head to hospitals and speak to younger iterations of their parents. David wanders into his childhood bedroom — tantalizing the audience with thoughts of naps.
More actors are embarrassed along the way. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline play the car rental employees who give David his vehicle. Waller-Bridge, one of the world’s funniest women and best writers, makes a fool of herself.
Only a dummy would call “Journey” wise. People have regrets — who knew?! However, it’s also absent a warm-and-fuzzy feeling, an evolving story to hold our interest or, really, surprises of any kind.
The sole shock is that the screenwriter, David Reiss, also penned “The Menu,” which was a clever movie and tasty puzzle. This roadside wreck — which he should pay someone to scrub from IMDB — is merely puzzling.
In the pantheon of films about magical cars, this one is not big, bold or beautiful. Actually, I can think of a much better word to describe “Journey.”
It rhymes with “Chitty Chitty.”