When it comes to collaborative art, a little friction can go a long way. While it may seem obvious that productive pushback and the challenging of instinctive tendencies are healthy counterbalances to creative tunnel vision, independent film studios have spent the 21st century hightailing it in the opposite direction. As callsheets on blockbuster endeavors have ballooned to the point of committee work, smaller projects have leaned further into auteur theory, marketing the majority of their wares as the design of a singular voice. Almost all of our name brand directors, be they industry veterans like Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, or relative neophytes like Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig, write their own screenplays, a trend that’s trickled down first time helmers and festival circuit darlings alike. Count Kogodana among their ranks; the essayist-turned-filmmaker’s first two flicks, Columbus and After Yang, betrayed a hyper-specific worldview, one with languid plotting and space for gentle rumination, forever tinged with a soft, golden hour glow. At first glance, the biggest difference between his new fantastical romance, A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey, and his previous outings is purely quantifiable, defined by a larger budget, a wider scope, more determined marketing, and the attachment of certified star power. The real breaking point, however, is in Kogonada’s relinquishing of the pen, trusting in a script from The Menu scribe Seth Reiss, and seeing if anything new shakes out in the process. 

Remaining open to the unknown is actually textual here, though for David (Colin Farrell), blind faith is uncharted territory. A sad sack living in an unnamed metropolis, we’ve only just made our protagonist’s acquaintance when plans to attend a far-off wedding are complicated by a boot on his front right tire. Enter a mysterious rental car company, operating out of a dimly-lit warehouse, who provides David with the only vehicle they offer (a 1994 Saturn) as well as an archaic, insisted-upon GPS set up. The old wheels get the job done, our hero arriving with plenty of time for a stilted meet-cute with Sarah (Margot Robbie), another unaccompanied guest who just so happens to pull up to the venue in the very same make and model. Despite parting ways, the pair quickly rejoin at the behest of their surprisingly sentient navigation systems, embarking, in tandem, on the titular trek through ups and downs of each lone wolf’s unresolved past.

The choice of car here, while appropriately quirky, represents a missed opportunity to cite the film’s cavalcade of mothballed reference points, which are squarely located in the mid-to-late aughts. If the likes of (500) Days of Summer, Mary and Max, and Wristcutters: A Love Story aren’t ringing any bells, you’re either too old or too young to have properly lived through the vanishingly brief moment when independent cinema was hellbent on appealing to lovelorn teenaged girls who ardently identified as misunderstood. Some examples have matured better than others, but for a microcosm of 30-something erstwhile hipsters, these titles remain gospel, and Journey capitulates to the dormant genre without the safeguards of modern pessimism. There’s something homey about the treacly soundtrack choices and maudlin discourse cosplaying as ocean-deep introspection, though one wonders if Reiss and Kogonada are looking for youthful converts, or simply playing into millennial nostalgia. 

They’re certainly not aiming to win the hearts of any cynics, or even those who like their I’s dotted and T’s crossed. To call Journey a logistical mess would be mistaking willful elision for sloppiness, but the complete absence of checks and balances here will have advocates of vigilant worldbuilding pulling their hair out in frustration. The rule book is nowhere to be found, allowing David and Sarah to slip through time and space in a manner that contradicts itself from scene to scene. Plowing through restrictions and common sense isn’t a problem when a movie is involving enough to distract from a creaky foundation, and the first few chapters here go off with minimal hitches. A different story emerges when we turn toward resolution.

It happens earlier than you expect, the reverie of David’s high school revisitation leading straight to the death bed of Sarah’s mother, swapping out playful effervescence for tearful trauma baiting in the process. Reiss’ dialogue, which is cloyingly obvious and blandly saccharine, is acceptable when bouncing off of madcap scenarios and excitable frivolity; when tasked with fortifying more weighty material, it sinks like a stone. Kogonada and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb do their best to compensate for the screenplay’s unearned melancholy, employing lush imagery and color-coded costuming to divert attention from a movie that sets up camp dangerously near the edge of Lifetime channel melodrama. Some character shading would help, but Journey’s isolated interest in David and Sarah’s mooring damage seemingly argues that lives are defined exclusively by their most trying episodes. Those wondering what these potential paramours like to do on the weekend are all out of luck, but hey, at least we get the catbird’s seat for their lowest moments.

Gaining audience sympathy without recognizable traits and only intermittent levity would be impossible for actors with less charm than Ferrall and Robbie, and it’s hard to think of a recent film that owes more of its basic watchability to the names on the poster. Any chance to hear the former bumble through nervous line readings in his native Irish accent is worth taking, but it’s the latter who wholly bends the unenviable material to her liking. She’s almost blindingly radiant, forging a charisma-infused, challenge-ready individual where a standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl sat lifelessly on the page. Her performance also benefits from the novelty of seeing Robbie in a modern, quasi-real world context; after years of period pieces and franchise entertainments, it’s a joy to witness one of our most dependable actresses rejoin the modern fold, even if her preposterous beauty comes with a whiff of surreality. Her chemistry with Ferrall is real, but then again, she could probably make sparks fly with a rock as a scene partner.

The alchemy between Kogonada and Reiss is similarly intrinsic, a union that’s copacetic enough to just about ruin the whole enterprise. Rather than bristling against Columbus and After Yang’s sumptuous sincerity, the screenplay emboldens Kogonada’s mawkish paradigm, coalescing into something so sugary that your tastebuds ball up into fists. This arrangement usually goes the other way, with Journey even showing a passing resemblance to a film that perfectly encapsulates the advantages of some light chafing: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Both films feature potential sweethearts on fantastical jaunts through personal history, Ferrall’s character is pitched and shot in much manner as Jim Carrey’s Joel Barsh, and Kogonada even pilfers Mind’s late-breaking opening credits sequence. Director Michel Gondry comes from the same glass-half-full vantage point as Kogonada and Reiss, but the omnipresent prickle of Charlie Kaufman’s pen turned a pleasant lark into an all-time classic. Their pairing looks even more exemplary in hindsight, with Gondry’s next flick, The Science of Sleep, proving a bit too enamored with its own playfulness, and Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, bleak enough to blot out the sun. Journey is the exception that proves the rule, the rare team effort that plays like a room full of yes men patting themselves on the back. Kogonada had better get back to writing his own material; his ink might just be his lens’ ideal sparring partner.