‘Ticket to Paradise’ Review: Julia Roberts and George Clooney Reunite in a Frothy, Flawed Rom-Com

It’s a foolhardy plan to craft a movie virtually totally across the onscreen chemistry between two film stars and hope for the most effective. But when these stars are George Clooney and Julia Roberts, the combustive energy of their pairing will go a long-ish manner. Thinly scripted rom-com Ticket to Paradise puffs its manner by 104 minutes totally on the vapors of its lead actors gassing round collectively, albeit with an help from spectacular Australian surroundings standing in for Bali.

It’s the primary time the actors have been paired on display screen since dreary hostage drama Money Monster (2016), and it’s their first correct comedy collectively since they made these first two extremely pleasing Ocean’s films with Steven Soderbergh on the helm again within the aughts. In truth, it’s the primary time shortly both of them have performed something substantial in any respect for the massive display screen (Roberts’ final starring theatrical position was Ben Is Back in 2018; Clooney’s was in The Midnight Sky in 2020), so it’s simple to really feel beneficiant and welcome them again, particularly given how a lot enjoyable they’re to be round. From the standpoint of millennials or Gen Z youngsters, they’re like a seldom-met aunt and uncle, tossing little barbed zingers at one another earlier than they get drunk, do goofy dances to early Nineties bangers and make out.

That is actually just about the plot of this film. Roberts and Clooney are solid as Georgia and David, a pair who have been married 25 years in the past, had a daughter named Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) after which cut up up after 5 years. So supposedly poisonous is their antipathy to at least one one other that they will’t even be in the identical zip code on the identical time.

And but the script (by the movie’s director Ol Parker and co-writer Daniel Pipski) contrives to seat them subsequent to one another at a sequence of occasions, like a mischievous deus ex machina with little creativeness however magical command over seating placements. First, it’s at Lily’s commencement from college in Chicago, the place they compete over who loves Lily extra. Then, it’s on a airplane to Bali after they’ve been invited to attend Lily’s wedding ceremony, the younger girl having fallen in love with Bali-native Gede (Maxime Bouttier), a seaweed farmer.

Once David and Georgia land in Bali, the script can’t cease plugging how lovely the panorama is. Which is sort of bizarre as a result of, as talked about earlier, the entire Bali a part of the film was filmed in Queensland, Australia due to points with COVID and likewise Oz’s extraordinarily enticing tax breaks, the movie’s press notes unabashedly reveal. There’s an odd, doth-protest-too-much high quality to all this incessant Bali-boosting, maybe as a result of the filmmakers is likely to be anxious there may very well be backlash to the truth that the dad and mom of the bride don’t need their daughter to marry a Balinese man — irrespective of how “incredibly handsome” a man he’s residing within the “the most beautiful place in the world,” as Georgia complains to her pilot boyfriend Paul (Lucas Bravo) on the telephone.

Georgia and David say they don’t need Lily to make a nasty life alternative on the identical age they have been once they acquired married. But the movie additionally retains stressing how rich and profitable the 2 are provided that they will afford first-class airline seats and a swanky resort, and so forth. It’s as if the movie desires to experience all of the markers of white privilege and American hegemony however then fake that none of that stuff actually issues to the principle characters; they simply need what’s finest for his or her daughter. (Also, does anybody on the planet personal as many jumpsuits and playsuits as we see Roberts’ Georgia sporting all through in her cruise capsule assortment?)

This is precisely the sort of self-delusion about revenue inequality and post-colonialism that was skewered so cruelly and successfully in TV’s The White Lotus just lately, amongst many different like-minded entertainments. But Ticket to Paradise performs Georgia and David’s efforts to sabotage Lily’s wedding ceremony so she’ll name it off prefer it’s some frothy screwball comedy plot from the Forties. Except Parker (finest identified for writing The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and directing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) isn’t any Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges, and the dialogue right here is all mumbling and grunting in comparison with the bickering lovers’ backchat in classics like His Girl Friday or My Man Godfrey.

While the supporting solid consists of some very watchable performers like Dever (wasted right here), Bouttier and Bravo, and some extra seasoned comedian professionals (Genevieve Lemon, at all times a delight), their characters are barely developed any greater than the various Balinese secondary gamers and extras, who’re little greater than sometimes speaking set ornament. In an eye-roll-inducing second, the movie even trots out that hoary outdated gag whereby somebody talks for a lot of seconds in a language apart from English solely to have a second character “translate” the speech right into a one- or two-word declaration.  (“She says, ‘happy to meet you.’”) Whatever might be subsequent? Perhaps a little bit of bed room farce round males sporting a lady’s trousers? Yup, there’s a few of that too.

Perhaps the movie’s by-the-numbers predictability might be a assist and never a hindrance, particularly for an older demographic that’s simply merely thrilled to see Roberts smiling whereas she tries to break one other wedding ceremony, Clooney twinkling his eyes and cocking his head quizzically like he’s been doing since ER. They each do these issues so nicely, and who minds a bit of nostalgic wallow every so often, particularly with actors like these two, ageing as gracefully as a pair of migratory birds?