A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is about two lovelorn singles who take a literal journey through their past to understand why they’re so bad at relationships. The film seems to point to the importance of parents talking to their children about love, but foul language takes a heavy toll on would-be viewers.
All David had to do was go to a friend’s wedding.
It wasn’t a big task. It required no boldness. Just drive 250 miles, dance a little, maybe grab a drink, then drive back the next day.
Well, David’s car got booted before the journey even began. Fortunately, a nearby sign points him to just the thing he needs: The Car Rental Agency.
After a bit of a strange encounter with the Agency’s cashier and mechanic—in which they insist he add on the GPS feature—David is on his way. Despite heavy rain, the wedding goes off without a hitch. Guests are dancing and drinking, and then David is introduced to Sarah by the bride and groom.
You live in the same city, they’re both told. You should talk.
The pair flirts. David offers to get Sarah a drink (which she declines). Sarah invites David to dance (which he declines). And then Sarah makes it clear that nothing should happen anyway, since they’ll inevitably hurt each other if they start a relationship.
Well, that meet-cute certainly did not go off the way the newlyweds had perhaps hoped.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean hope is lost.
As David is driving home the next morning, the GPS in his car—the one he was bullied into getting—starts talking to him. Not just giving him directions to his next destination, but asking him questions:
Do you want to go on a big, bold, beautiful journey?
Little does David know that Sarah is being asked the exact same question in her own Car Rental Agency vehicle. The two run into each other again at a fast-food restaurant—one they were ordered to enter by their GPS systems. When they get ready to head out, Sarah’s car stalls, and David is instructed to give her a lift.
“Should we be trusting the GPS?” Sarah asks.
“I have nothing to lose,” David admits.
“Me neither,” shrugs Sarah.
It seems they’re off on a big, bold, beautiful journey together.
David and Sarah are both pretty confused. They’re obsessed with the idea of happiness, but they are also convinced that nobody will make them happy—or at least, that they’ll never make someone else happy.
Throughout their journey, they learn that the reason for these feelings stems from their relationships with their parents.
Luckily, their big, bold, beautiful journey literally takes them into the past (more on that in Spiritual Elements), affording them the opportunity to talk to their parents about these problems. They gain perspective from those conversations and really start to understand why their parents (and themselves, by extension) struggled in their own relationships.
And if there’s one bit of advice their parents imbue them with, it’s this: It’s not about finding happiness. It’s about being open and choosing contentment. There will be times when you are deeply unhappy. But if you keep an open mind and choose to be content with the life you have, then you can weather the storm. And moments of happiness will come, too.
We see that David’s parents really do love him. And even though they didn’t necessarily do everything right, it’s the love he shares with them that eventually helps David overcome his own self-doubts and fears.
Similarly, Sarah’s mom sacrificed everything to give her daughter a good life. Sarah feels guilty that she never got to tell her mother how much she appreciated that, but she also realizes that her mom wouldn’t have wanted her to harbor those negative feelings. Rather, her mom would have wanted her to be content and live boldly.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a strangely spiritual film. There’s no mention of God or faith here. But there’s still clearly something mystical occurring. (Sarah jokingly says, “I think I just saw God,” after nearly passing out from holding her breath.)
Obviously, there’s the concept of the Car Rental Agency itself. The GPS that navigates for Sarah and David is seemingly sentient. Regardless, it takes them to random destinations where they find mysterious doorways.
These doors are often located in the middle of nowhere: One is in the woods, another is in a large field, and still another is hidden inside a derelict greenhouse. If you walk around them, they appear to be normal doorways (you know, besides the fact that they’re standing where no door belongs). But if you walk through them, they lead into David and Sarah’s pasts.
First, they’re transported to a lighthouse David once visited by himself. Then, they go to an art museum Sarah used to frequent with her mom. After that, David is taken to the opening night of his high school musical. And sometimes, they aren’t even taken to their pasts; sometimes they wind up in an empty warehouse set up with lights, like some sort of performance art theater.
Each scenario allows David and Sarah to relive these impactful moments and discuss them—to see what might have happened if they had said this instead of that. It doesn’t change the past, but it does give them some new perspective.
At one point, Sarah asks who put the doors in place and why. However, these questions are quickly brushed off as the two are more interested in where the doors are taking them on their journey than they are in who orchestrated it.
At one of their destinations, Sarah and David climb a hill that offers them a view of Earth from space. It’s all just part of the mystical aspects of this film. And no, none of it is ever explained. It just is.
It seems that the employees of the Car Rental Agency may have some supernatural oversight of some sort. They know a lot about David when he first arrives to rent a car from them. (They even have a headshot that he doesn’t remember taking.) And they even manage to restore a vehicle that had exploded overnight.
Being that this is a story about romance, it’s no shock that Sarah and David fall in love. They share a couple of kisses.
Sarah dances sensually with a man at a wedding. Later, we see the two through the window of her hotel room. We don’t see the act onscreen, but it’s implied they have sex, since we see the guy approach her on the bed as he begins to undress.
We see David without a shirt on as he’s changing clothes. Sarah climbs into the backseat of the car to change. We don’t see anything, but she and David make several flirtatious jokes about peeking. Sarah wears a low-cut top for the second half of the film. We also see her in a backless, formfitting dress in one scene.
In one scene, David is taken back to when he was 15 years old—though we still see David at his current age. Remembering the event, he nudges his buddy (a teen at the time), excitedly telling the guy that he’ll wind up having sex later that night.
Though not explicitly stated, it’s suggested that both David and Sarah have had sexual relationships in the past. Sarah says that she had an affair with her college professor.
We hear about divorce. One door leads Sarah and David to a place where Sarah broke up with her boyfriend and David broke up with his fiancée. Another door leads them to a night when David had his heart broken in high school.
The GPS shocks David and Sarah when it suddenly announces that a deer is in their path. Before they have time to respond, they do, in fact, hit a deer, causing the car to flip several times before landing upside down.
Miraculously, the two crawl out unscathed. The deer is definitely dead, but rather than blood, yarn spills out from it. The car itself catches fire and later explodes harmlessly.
A woman tries to stab David with a fork. At their first door, David jokes that he found dead bodies on the other side. Elsewhere, Sarah says she thinks her dad is alive, but she wishes he was dead. She also verbally threatens a guy after he inadvertently says she looks old.
We hear that David was born prematurely and nearly died. David urges his high school drama teacher to have his pancreas checked out, since he knows the man dies from issues with the organ just a few years later. However, since the teacher doesn’t realize that this is David from the future, he brushes it off and presumably dies.
More than 30 uses of the f-word and 20 of the s-word. We also hear “a–hole,” “d–n,” “d–mit,” “h—” and “pr–k.” The phrase “crap out” is used repeatedly in a scene. God’s name is abused about a dozen times, and Jesus’ name is abused thrice.
Adults drink at special events. A few characters smoke cigarettes.
We learn that when David was 11, his mom left him and his dad. She eventually returned, and his parents remained married, but the incident disturbed David deeply. His parents never discussed it with David. And he later says it was the only time he ever saw his dad cry. He wanted to comfort his dad during that turbulent time, but he was scared. So instead, he internalized it, which contributed to many of his romantic problems later in life.
Sarah harbors her own parental scars. Her parents weren’t together, it seems, and Sarah’s dad didn’t really have much interest in his daughter. Her mom did the best she could with what she had, but it was clearly difficult. And Sarah feels guilty because she wasn’t with her mom when she died: She was with her professor, with whom she was having an affair. Sarah never forgave herself for that.
People lie. David’s car is booted when he illegally parks in front of a fire hydrant.
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is certainly big. It’s bold, too. But I think it falls short in the beautiful department.
The spiritual weirdness of traveling to the past through random doorways is just that: weird. It doesn’t seem to be conveying any kind of hidden message. It’s just a narrative device that the creators employ to help the film’s characters process and examine formative events from their pasts.
But that’s not really what hurts the film.
There is a lot of unnecessary language here. And if the moviemakers had toned it down, it wouldn’t have gotten its R rating.
It’s kind of ridiculous. And it’s also kind of a shame.
This is the sort of movie that could have acted as a catalyst for some important parent-child discussions about love and relationships. In fact, it seems to encourage parents to talk to their tweens and teens about love. But the profanity just takes too big of a toll.
So disappointingly, I’d say A Big Bold Beautiful Journey just isn’t worth the risk.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
