“I think all of us tend to act a lot, David. That we perform more than we think we do.”
– Female Cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
In all three of filmmaker Kogonada’s feature films, a thread emerges regarding self-identity. In his 2017 feature debut Columbus, his lead character, Jin (John Cho), grapples with who he is in the shadow of his illustrious father and how he can step out of it. The 2022 sci-fi drama After Yang is an exploration of connection as a key component of living (whether organic or artificially created) and being able to take control of one’s destiny. Now, within A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Kogonada uses the artifice of musicals to explore the significant role that identity plays in relationships, beginning with the individual. Written by Seth Reiss (The Menu) and starring Colin Farrell (After Yang) and Margot Robbie (Barbie), A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a lot like life in its dueling contradictions — whimsical and grounded, full of wide-eyed wonder and heartbreaking realism – asking its audience to say “yes” and go on an adventure. Now on home video, viewers can enjoy both the fanciful romantic tale and its three behind the scenes featurettes on one’s leisure.
L-R: Colin Farrell as David and Margot Robbie as Sarah in A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY. © 2025 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Each attending a wedding solo, David and Sarah (Carrell and Robbie, respectively) are introduced by the bride and groom and left to their own devices. When a possible connection is interrupted by self-doubt, the two part ways, presumably never to speak again. Yet, when, by seeming chance, the two bump into each other during a lunch stop on the road home (fortuitous as Sarah’s car breaks down), the pair get to talking and decide to travel back to the city together. Following the GPS device included with the rental, they find themselves directed toward seemingly random locations with one thing in common: a door that, when opened, enables David and Sarah to journey into their respective pasts to experience their joys and heartbreaks again. But this time, together.
The following review is based on a Blu-ray retail copy of the film provided by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Based on both the above summary and the marketing, one would likely think that A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is an uplifting, imaginative experience that will have you dancing out of the theater. While it is uplifting, the film is more like if the existential elements of I ♥ Huckabees (2004), the psychological exploration of the leads of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and the cinematography and color theory of La La Land (2016) gathered together in a black box theater. The film is heavy in symbolism while also lacking in a great deal of subtlety, two aspects which one would think would grate but end up as the scaffolding of an atypical romantic dramedy in which identity is the key component. As in life, one cannot have a successful romantic relationship without communication. But, in order to have good communication, one must also be honest with themselves and who they are. Thus, in order for someone to love you, they need to know you and, if you’ve built walls of any sort, then it’s possible to create an impossible situation, an unscalable obstacle, none will succeed in escaping or toppling. Before even reaching the wedding, David is introduced as the child of doting parents — an aspect, we learn, he resents due to the profound expectations he feels such doting sets upon a person’s shoulders. His original plans to travel to the wedding are interrupted when his car is booted, thereby necessitating the need to rent a car. Here’s where magic meets realism as David rents from The Car Rental Agency with his primary contact Waller-Bridge’s accent-changing Female Cashier who, in trying to sell him the GPS for when his “phone craps out,” also challenges him to identify himself as an actor. Considering we later learn that David once headlined a high school performance of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, this could be seen as an attempt to get David to self-identify, but it’s actually the first attempt to get him to realize that all of us, each of us, are pretenders. The version we put forward is an act, a shell, an illusion based upon the version of us that we think the rest of the world will enjoy (or tolerate). Through Reiss’s script, Kogonada declares that the mask we create for others eventual starts to define ourselves until that’s the version we think we are. Especially by incorporating robust primary colors (bold reds, yellows, and blues in clothes, accessories, and the like), as well as amplifying the natural elements of nature (vibrant greens of flora, beautiful blue of sky, and even a glowing representation of Earth), the transcendent aspects of a musical take hold and empower the audience to just go with the situation. As proclaimed by Farrell and Robbie in the featurette “Love’s Ever Shifting Landscape: A Relatable Romance,” these characters are so desperate that they don’t even question the ridiculousness of their situation and just roll with it (also indicative of musicals or magical storytelling), making the film, as far as a romance, something light and airy, and, most importantly, safe.
L-R: Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Female Cashier and Kevin Kline as The Mechanic in A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY. © 2025 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
However, as an existential exploration of self, the script and execution aren’t interested in maintaining safety or distance, encouraging the audience to see David and Sarah as cyphers for their own lived experience. To that end, the characters begin as the expected opposites: she self-identifying as prone to destroying relationships (hurting others before they hurt her), while he is the romantic for whom the right partner hasn’t materialized. The doors they encounter and travel through create opportunities for the pair to relive past moments, generating the expected opportunity for closeness to ferment between them. The unexpected, however, is two-fold. The first is that each experience also presents an opportunity for reevaluation, to see a moment of great pain without the emotions of the moment and to take control of their healing journey. The second is that, through each doorway, both David and Sarah are challenged to confront the identity they’ve created for themselves and to see the truth of who they are. Like any musical, reality is the thing we pretend exists in order to sing, dance, and stretch the borders of reason in order to divine a truth. Here, that’s represented by various aspects of art and creation. For instance, one doorway leads to a black box theater — a space in which imagination is key and anything is possible as actors dressed minimally move about a minimalistic set — which creates not just the opportunity for diverging explorations for the pair, but for the two to rejoin dressed as actors on a stage (even though the characters are reproducing a piece of art depicted within the film).
L-R: Director Kogonada and actor Colin Farrell on the set of A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY. © 2025 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Side note: Kogonada is not known for imagery without purpose, so I think it’s fascinating that one scene is set in an art gallery presented work seemingly inspired by Michel Foucault’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, itself an essay asking about the truth and value of something when duplicated through machinery versus human experience. Specifically, the fact these characters are grappling with who they are and the form they’ve created for themselves and how their choices replicated and shaped their identity, but it may have all been bullshit due to an inability to be gentle with themselves.
L-R: Margot Robbie as Sarah and Colin Farrell as David in A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY. © 2025 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The point of the above, if you will, is that the Journey isn’t merely about two strangers joining their lives together (per the rules of romance and musicals), but the willingness to confront the parts of ourselves that we try to hide alongside someone we trust. That’s what makes the film unexpected — the moments of whimsy are melancholic through and through, the most shocking moment also being hilarious in its execution as David and Sarah relive a terrible memory in a place they’d been to separately and which now they must do so again together. But, unlike other memories in which everything appears to follow a track established by the past, this one scene goes off the rails as the past reacts to the present, itself a suggestion that when we cling to past shames, they will always be with us. Letting go, healing, and understanding that moments in our lives don’t have to define how we see ourselves, that they can just be what they are — moments — from which we can learn, adapt, and move on from. The clinging to our past pain is what causes loneliness and resentment, regardless of companionship, and can only be resolved through the safety of open communication.
The three featurettes don’t particular dive into any of this, opting instead to either explore the making of the film primarily through the perspective of actors Farrell and Robbie (“Love’s Ever Shifting Landscape: A Relatable Romance”) or through Kogonada’s vision for making the film (“The Magic Behind The Scenes: Crafting the Journey”). The two featurettes average six minutes each, with members of the cast and crew providing their reactions to characters, set design, cinematography, the script, and other aspects of making the film. For those who are enjoying the literal song-and-dance number featuring Farrell, that gets touch on a bit in the two featurettes before becoming the focus of the nearly-four-minute featurette “A Big Bold Beautiful Musical Number.” Perhaps because of the general reception to the film, there’s not much included with this release that offers deep insights or dives into the layered narrative. Not even a single mention how, once again, a tale from Reiss (The Menu) hinges on a burger. Considering the wondrousness of the film, it’s sad that there’s not more included to better explore the symbolism of the artwork, the play, the characters, and their journey beyond the vague anime inspiration Kogonada took for the incorporation of the doors and the way that the characters just accept the surreality of their adventure.
L-R: Actors Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie and director Kogonada on the set of A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY. © 2025 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The Female Cashier’s declaration to David is about as close as one gets to William Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy from As You Like It. They mean different things, though, even if they sound the same. Shakespeare’s refers to the cyclical nature of life, with everyone having an entrance and exit (life and death), and with all of us fitting into various roles in between either designed by society or biology. What she means, however, is that all of us pretend to be something that we are and something that we are not. That the version we put forward is merely an aspect of the truth we cling to, either out of self-preservation or desperation (dealer’s choice). What’s truly beautiful about Kogonada’s Journey is that it doesn’t try to create romance out of the expected shared experience of joy and wonder to break down walls, but that it includes the dark parts of its lead characters and says, “can you love me anyway?.” In the old days, before my second born and when I was a teacher, I often used a Colgate ad of a couple facing each other as they sleep in bed with one wearing an eye mask on over their eyes and one over their nose and I called it “real love.” It often got giggles from the class, but I stand by it. A couple doesn’t remain for the good times, but in spite of the bad. They accept who a person is, not the imagined version that exists in longing or expectation. It’s bittersweet, full of ache, and, astonishingly, big and beautiful.
If you missed it in theaters, give it a chance. It may surprise you.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey Special Features:
- Love’s Ever Shifting Landscape: A Relatable Romance (6:15)
- The Magic Behind The Scenes: Crafting the Journey (5:49)
- A Big Bold Beautiful Musical Number (3:42)
Available on digital October 14th, 2025.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD December 23rd, 2025.
For more information, head either to the official A Big Bold Beautiful Journey theatrical website or Sony Pictures Home Entertainment webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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