Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Filmmaker Kogonada has two feature films to his name, Columbus and After Yang. One is a slice of life drama about loss, opportunity, and legacy; the other is a grounded sci-fi exploration of grief, identity, and life. Both are films Kogonada wrote, directed, and edited himself. They are singular films from a singular filmmaker, and Kogonada is well on his way to being among the very best of his generation. His latest film, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, though, is something of a detour from the introspective, quiet, humanist work of his previous films. 

Journey is, as the full title suggests, a big, loud, colorful exploration of love, a film with such a determined primary color palette and archetypical characters that it feels like it should be a musical (derogatory). Indeed, it does contain a musical number, which works as proof of concept for Kogonada to direct a musical, but Journey mostly feels like a series of missed connections. Kogonada directs, but he did not write the script, that comes from late-night comedy writer and The Menu scribe Seth Reiss. Kogonada also doesn’t edit this film, that is done by Susan E. Kim and Jonathan Alberts. And it’s not that any of these people do a bad job—though Reiss’s script is a reach—but Journey lacks that singular voice and consistency of Kogonada’s previous work, and what this film desperately needs is something to hold all its pieces together.

Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie star as David and Sarah, respectively, dispirited romantics who have given up on love, despite both of them looking like, well, Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie. The idea that these two would lack romantic opportunities is outlandish. Sarah, at least, admits to being some kind of romantic psychopath, cheating and proposing marriage from one breath to the next, which explains why a woman so beautiful and charismatic would find herself perpetually alone. She’s the toxic ex in everyone’s life. David, meanwhile, is a sad sack type. Colin Farrell can and has believably embodied a pathetic romantic (see also: The Lobster), but here David is written too broadly. Farrell excels as an actor when he can dig into a specific focal point for his character, but David is like the generic loser friend in a sitcom. He’s Ross Geller without even the benefit of dinosaur facts to make him memorable. 

On the way to a friend’s wedding, David’s car is unexpectedly booted, forcing him to follow twee signs to a mysterious car rental staffed only by Phoebe Waller-Bridge with a bad German accent and Kevin Kline, who at least attempts to portray a recognizable human being. David ends up with a car with a GPS that sounds like Jodie Turner-Smith—Farrell’s co-star in the infinitely better After Yang—and after meeting at the wedding, David and Sarah end up driven to a series of doors that allow them to share their pasts, particularly their humiliations, with one another. They basically speed run getting to know each other to learn a lesson about love.

For a film that unites such talent, though, Journey falls flat. Kogonada tries to inject some sense of sweeping, timeless romance into the film, but he is working against Reiss’s script, which feels like the book to a musical workshopping in summer stock. It’s just a bad match of writer and director, and Farrell and Robbie can’t save Journey from itself. With a more honed, specific script, Kogonada might be able to do something with the combination of whimsy and melancholy embedded in the story. Or with a broader, more commercial director, Reiss’s script might play more like a meta spin on a rom-com. But together they just make a hash of it, neither collaborator bringing out the best in the other.

And Farrell and Robbie are stuck in the middle, seemingly at a loss. I’ve never seen a bad performance from either of them, and both of them have starred in some stinkers, but here they get close to giving genuinely bad performances. They’re the type of actors who usually transcend the material and find ways to do something interesting even amidst the creative failure of others, but here they are stranded, not unlike Phoebe Waller-Bridge who is also working way too hard on what is a pretty basic “magically mundane” character. You can feel that everyone wants this material to work, and Journey’s saving grace is its sincerity, but the winding road the characters venture down ultimately leads nowhere. 

It's not a total loss, there’s too much talent involved for that, but Journey reminds me of Colin Farrell’s other whimsical romantic fantasy misfire, A Winter’s Tale. Big ideas, big execution, plenty of commitment from all involved, but a confused tone and shaky script that can’t support the ideas in play. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey looks nice enough—perhaps Kogonada really should direct a musical—but it is ultimately an exercise in frustration. This is one road trip not worth taking.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is now playing exclusively in theaters.