At The Movies: Whimsy abounds in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Sketch offers all-ages entertainment

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (PG13)

109 minutes, opens on Sept 18

★★☆☆☆

The story: Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell co-star as lonesome strangers. A twist of fate brings them together for a transformative journey after a chance meeting at a wedding.

David (Farrell) arrives at a car rental agency to find himself auditioned in a cavernous warehouse by a mechanic (Kevin Kline) and a cashier (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). It is most curious. He could be in The Truman Show (1998), his existence in reality a television soundstage, or some cosmic joke by Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004) creator Charlie Kaufman.

The Hollywood fantasy A Big Bold Beautiful Journey has much of the same magic realism once David gets his sedan and a sentient Global Positioning System navigates him and Sarah (Robbie) to a series of portals, through which they relive defining moments in each other’s memories.

They revisit a lighthouse and a museum.

David also returns briefly to his 15-year-old self and experiences anew the anguish of his unrequited crush on a schoolmate.

This is the third movie by the Korean-American video essayist Kogonada. The stories are about connection, even if between a family man – played by Farrell in the Irish actor’s first role for the director – and his android son in the critically raved After Yang (2021).

For David and Sarah, two wounded drifters, confronting their pasts opens the door to love.

The metaphor is this literal, and the narrative itself is without complexity or tension.

The couple flirt coyly, Farrell in his charming lilt opposite the wide-eyed enchantment of Barbie (2023) bombshell Robbie.

For all its grand notions on healing and second chances, the romance with its dreamy visuals – set to a score by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi, no less – is twee whimsy.

Hot take: The inviting title leads disappointingly to a road trip-as-spiritual odyssey more picturesque than profound.

Sketch (PG13)

94 minutes, opens on Sept 18

★★★★☆

The story: The monster drawings of 10-year-old schoolgirl Amber (Bianca Belle) come violently, chaotically to life after her sketchbook falls into a magic pond behind her house. She and her older brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) must race to save their suburban town, themselves included, from being killed.

Here is a wondrous discovery, a kids’ adventure with the brio and inventiveness of those 1980s Amblin Entertainment touchstones E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Gremlins (1984).

Live-action indie Sketch is the feature debut of American film-maker Seth Worley, who wrote, directed, edited and put his video design background to excellent effect for animating Amber’s waxy crayon creations.

There is a blue giant she has embellished with glitter glue, and red-eye spiders she calls “eyeders”. Others have spiked legs, the better to gore humans.

They are delightful absurdities that can spring only from a child’s imagination, dissolving, as they do, into puffs of chalk dust when chased through the woods and then shot with Amber and Jack’s water guns.

But their trail of destruction is gruesome, and the fiends are horrifically real, for Amber, certainly. Her mother has died; sketching is how she articulates her anger and crushing sadness in a household where her brother and father (Tony Hale) are choosing to ignore theirs.

The poor devoted dad is struggling just to raise the two children on his own.

Tremendous fun though it is, complete with a cool aunt (D’Arcy Carden) plus a loudmouth classmate (Kalon Cox) for the siblings’ goofball sidekick, the movie is a touching story of a family in pain and Amber braving the monsters that manifest her darkest emotions.

Hot take: Good grief indeed. This crackerjack romp offers all-ages entertainment alongside heartfelt lessons about coping with loss.