‘A Large Daring Lovely Journey’ assessment: Robbie, Farrell, all vibes, no velocity

“A Large Daring Lovely Journey” is a surreal, color-saturated quest about therapeutic childhood scars in an effort to have wholesome grownup relationships. It’s a corny highway journey.

Directed by the monomonikered Kogonada (“After Yang”) from a script by Seth Reiss, this sputtering high-concept love story is about two singletons, Sarah (Margot Robbie) and David (Colin Farrell), who meet at a marriage and carpool residence in a mystical rental sedan guided by a bossy GPS (voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith) that forces them to discover why she cheats and he swings from sizzling to chilly. Their meandering, inevitable path to romance pit-stops at magical portals — precise doorways standing alone on the shoulder — that transport them to one another’s pivotal reminiscences, say the hospital the place Sarah’s mom died or the auditorium the place a 15-year-old David first bought his coronary heart damaged. It’s not time journey precisely; they will’t change their historical past. Take into account it Waze-navigated regression remedy.

Who wouldn’t be curious to see Ebenezer Scrooge take a Tinder date to fulfill his girlfriends previous? It’s lovely to see Farrell relive starring in a highschool class musical, leaping, twisting and grinning by way of the dorky choreography. I even preferred the tidy coincidences that lead David to hire a 1994 Saturn from two pushy desk clerks (Kevin Kline and Phoebe Waller-Bridge) who appear to know extra about him than they’re saying. As Waller-Bridge says in a testy German accent asserting the movie’s theme, “Generally we have now to carry out to get to the reality.” (Or in David’s case, belt a couple of verses from “The best way to Achieve Enterprise With out Actually Making an attempt.”)

Like Kogonada, I consider that artifice is a great tool to dig up honesty. However a script with this a lot contrivance solely works if it’s delivered with snap and confidence. “A Large Daring Lovely Journey” is sticky candy and sludgy and so cloyingly aesthetic that the roadkill bleeds ropes of twee entrails. Whereas the movie has a techno-fantasy bent, Kogonada’s fashion is simply too self-consciously bespoke, the cinematic equal of a hipster carrying round their previous iPod in a hand-carved wood case. It’s probably the most millennial-chic film since “Backyard State” — even earlier than it will get to a montage set to the Brilliant Eyes’ hit “First Day of My Life,” a ballad launched in 2005 that newlyweds have been swaying to at receptions with candles in mason jars ever since.

Kogonada earned the business’s consideration as a cineaste who spliced collectively video supercuts illustrating the strategies of auteurs like Ozu, Kubrick and Wes Anderson. Freed to make his personal films, he nonetheless comes throughout a tad professorial. His breakout debut, 2017’s “Columbus,” had a equally stagy proscenium really feel with two platonic strangers, a shiny teenager (Haley Lu Richardson) and a glum e-book translator (John Cho) rattling round an Indiana faculty city speaking about structure. Right here, say in a scene that takes place in a quiet room with a ticking clock, you’re considering not solely of the nudge that point is treasured however of Kogonada himself elbowing you that that is how a director will get the thought throughout.

For no matter purpose, the often vibrant Margot Robbie intones her strains like she, too, is trapped in a faculty play. It’s an oddly false efficiency that comes throughout even stiffer as she’s been shellacked with thick make-up and wig-like hair. Possibly the intention was that Sarah, an avowed man-eater, makes use of her magnificence as armor. Nonetheless, it’s a bit a lot when their automotive briefly runs off the highway and she or he walks away from the crash with immaculate locks.

Maybe for having acted earlier than in Kogonada’s 2021 AI weepie “After Yang,” Farrell fares higher. He is aware of to steadiness the arch environment by including emotion to his silences. Early on, there’s a marriage scene when David thinks he’s fumbled it with Sarah and he stands on the sidelines of the dance ground watching her slither as much as another man. There’s a glance in his eye like a hungry mutt gazing a butcher store window: pathetic and moony and flummoxed by how one can get what he desires.

We come to the movie with a lot preexisting affection for Farrell and Robbie that it’s a shock when their characters kiss and we notice they’ve bought no chemistry. It’s not solely their fault. As a substitute of flirting, they’re eternally having to blurt out how they really feel about their mother and pop. Not even Farrell, certainly one of my favourite actors, can pull off David earnestly telling Sarah, “I see you.”

One of many good tweaks the script has undergone since touchdown on the 2020 Blacklist is that David and Sarah now name one another out when their monologues sound too rehearsed, playfully accusing one another of workshopping their angst on previous exes. We’re grateful for the acknowledgment of the stilted dialogue. Plus, it teases the beat the place they wind up on a double date with two former lovers.

Their greatest conversations are with different individuals: Farrell with Hamish Linklater, taking part in David’s nervous father who desires to guard his son from the world, and Robbie with Lily Rabe as Sarah’s overwhelmed single mom who can’t clarify her personal horrible style in males. David and Sarah don’t need to freak out their dad and mom, in order that they need to act like nothing bizarre is occurring, permitting these scenes to have fascinating, unexplored ranges.

Nonetheless, it’s unimaginable to jump-start any suspense when the couple’s omnipotent GPS is aware of greatest. And the emotional mechanics don’t even work. Trauma-dumping on the primary date isn’t a shortcut to emotional intimacy. It’s an enormous daring crimson signal screaming cease.