Two movies which perhaps deserve to be addressed in tandem, for they each succeed and then somehow fail owing to the pair of leads chosen to front them.
ABBBJ is the kind of project that could never have floated commercially without A-list leadership. But neither Margot Robbie nor, especially, Colin Farrell are right for these roles.
However, it is in truth the essential like-ability of this pair of performers and the fact that the screenplay never quite gives them enough reason to dislike each other beyond the core situation of their marriage and its compromises, which ultimately undermines this new adaptation of the novel.
Some way into ABBBJ I started to get this 'I'm watching a live action remake of a Japanese magical realist animation' vibe. So off I went to IMDB and discovered that not only is the director Japanese but the score has been provided by Joe Hisaishi, a contributor to the movies of Miyazagi and 'Beat' Kitano.
I warmed to the fantasy elements, but I feel they would have worked better in an actual Asian film...a film in which the main characters possibly had some rather more interesting episodes in their lives to revisit in this fashion.
In the same grazing of IMDB I also discovered that Robbie is basically Scottish, although she grew up in Australia. Now I can't hear her doing an American accent without also detecting the underlying cadences of what must be her parents' voices.
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