‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ is a curious, offbeat film – almost an inversion of a typical love story. Instead of a sweeping romance in the style of ‘La La Land’, we meet two lonely individuals, both with deep-seated commitment issues, who slowly and reluctantly find themselves drawn together. It’s hardly conventional, but that’s precisely the point.

The setup is eccentric: Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge run a bespoke car-hire service in an enormous sports-hall-like space, essentially providing “dating assistance” to people who don’t even realise they need it. Their clients, played by Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, embark on a surreal road trip, encountering figures and places from their pasts – childhood friends, former lovers, even their parents as they were around the time of their own births. Each step of the way, they pass through fairytale-like doors that transport them back into these memories, while the other watches from the sidelines.

The conceit has echoes of ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ and even the redemptive structure of ‘A Christmas Carol’, with characters revisiting pivotal moments in their lives. Yet unlike more familiar romances, these two aren’t trying to impress each other by putting on an act. Instead, they openly confront the very flaws and traumas that make them “unsuitable” partners. Their self-doubt is what ultimately makes them a match: neither believes they deserve love, and so, paradoxically, they find it together.

The film is strongest in these moments of vulnerability, but it also feels oddly austere and detached. Doors open to the past with great metaphorical weight, but too often the idea is left hanging. The characters re-enact high-school crushes gone sour or confront people who disappointed them, only to sneer that their lives turned out badly. It rarely pushes deeper, skating over big existential questions rather than digging into them.

The architecture of memory is central here – corridors, thresholds, doors – but the metaphor remains underdeveloped. In some respects, the film recalls ‘Flatliners’, with its characters revisiting formative traumas, though stripped of its gothic intensity. It gestures toward profound questions – how childhood shapes adulthood, whether regret can be undone, whether knowing the past changes the present – but rarely does more than scratch the surface.

As an off-kilter road movie, it’s intriguing and often visually striking. Robbie and Farrell bring weight to two characters who feel they’re not “special enough” to be in relationships, and their chemistry is unexpectedly tender. But ultimately, ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ is less than the sum of its parts – elliptical, self-conscious, and curiously uncompelling, despite its ambitious premise.