A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025)

Director: Kogonada

Cast: Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Might have missed it, too, if it hadn’t been for a more-charming-than-average trailer, I might have missed it altogether.

Did I Like It: To paraphrase Bart Simpson*, after he saw Naked Lunch (1991), “I can think of at least four things wrong with that title.”

Unfortunately, whatever charm the film had at its disposal was spent in that aforementioned trailer. Even in the context of the full film, the one moment where a character says the misplaced-in-time Sarah (Robbie) looks like she’s forty, plays less funny and more like a line meant for a different actress.

Robbie and Farrell seem to be vaguely embarrassed by the film happening around them, as if they both understand they have to allow for a down project after their recent highs in Barbie (2023) and The Penguin and act for our patience while the rest of their career calibrates in front of our eyes.

A bland rebound project might register on the mind as a tepid non-event, if it weren't for the fact that the supporting cast is utterly wasted. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Kevin Kline can each single-handedly raise films beyond where they might have otherwise been. Here, they just show up and have a mildly quirky air about them, while unfortunately neglecting to have anything funny to say or do. There’s a different cut of this film somewhere that is probably just as uneven in pacing and tone, and is ultimately still a small, tepid, reasonably photographed circular trip, but it would at least have been a bit funnier.

*I thought I may have gone to this well before in a review, and searching the reviews, I apparently did it in a recent review for Night Editor (1946). In retrospect, I mean it far more here than I did then. Ah, well. There is at least some risk of repeating oneself over nearly 1000 reviews.

French Kiss (1995)

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Cast: Meg Ryan, Kevin Kline, Timothy Hutton, Jean Reno

Have I Seen it Before: …yes? Although as I type this I have virtually no memory for the individual moments for the movie. Maybe I saw it in the middle of it on Cable once? Maybe Lora was in the middle of watching it and I came in on the middle of it.

Did I Like It: I’m a little disappointed when writer-directors (like Kasdan) direct a movie they themselves didn’t write. It feels so mercenary. Is it art? Does a film even need to be art? Anybody who complains about the sameness of movies these days needs to understand that nearly any movie in this genre could be cut together in any haphazard manner, and it would all still kind of make sense. Kevin Kline might speak french intermittently, and Meg Ryan might be really into email and call-in radio shows at random times, but we’d all still have pretty good time.

That probably doesn’t have much to do with this film itself. All of the main players are doing their level-headed mid-90s best. Meg Ryan swings between high strung and adorable like she was put on the planet to do it (which, going by box office receipts alone, she was), and Kevin Kline becomes embodies the contradictions of a leading man and quirky character actor which I… just realized now he peaked in Wild Wild West (1999).

And that’s what most romantic comedies. Cookie cutter plots with people commercially proven to be likable. You can get extra points (possibly even on the back end, if you managed to finagle a producer credit, like Meg Ryan in this particular instance) if you can set the movie in some far flung location that has an aura of romance at its center.

It’s done well, but then again its not hard to do that well.