DIRECTOR: Ol Parker
CAST: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Maxime Bouttier, Billie Lourd, Lucas Bravo
RUNNING TIME: 104 mins
CERTIFICATE: 12A
BASICALLY…: A divorced couple (Clooney and Roberts) team up to sabotage their daughter’s (Dever) wedding…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
When Burt Bacharach sang “What the world needs now is love, sweet love…” all those years ago, he had no idea that it would especially ring true today. With the passing of the Queen, war in Eastern Europe, a rollback on productive rights, THAT Oscars slap, and several other devastations facing our world right now, now really is the time to need some tender love and care to fawn over, and luckily Hollywood stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts are on hand to give us exactly that.
They co-star – their fourth such collab, after the first two Ocean’s movies and Money Monster – in director and co-writer Ol Parker’s Ticket to Paradise, a rom-com that is certainly old-fashioned but pleasingly so, allowing its lead A-listers the chance to flex their irresistible screwball chemistry together, and turn up the charm to almost unparalleled degrees. The movie itself is a sweet and playful romp that subverts a few rom-com conventions every now and then (but still leaves some tropes exactly as they are), but it is Clooney and Roberts who are the main attraction, and it’s just lovely seeing them play off each other on-screen once again.
The two actors play Daniel and Georgia respectively, a once-married couple who now cannot stand to even be within the same vicinity of each other. Their one remaining connection, it seems, is their daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who’s just graduated from college and is backpacking to Bali with her friend Wren (Billie Lourd, herself sharing a mini Booksmart reunion with Dever) before beginning her career as a lawyer. However, once on the beautiful island itself, she meets and instantly falls in love with local seaweed farmer Gede (Maxime Bouttier), and within days they make plans to marry. However, Daniel and Georgia – concerned that their daughter is about to make the same mistake that they themselves made around her age – are less keen to see Lily get hitched, and so they form an uneasy alliance to sabotage their upcoming wedding, whether it’s by stealing their rings or planting ideas into their heads about the true longevity of marriage. However, will Lily and Gede’s undying love for each other inspire Daniel and Georgia to take a different path, and maybe rekindle their own relationship?
As a watcher of many traditional rom-coms, you probably already know the answer to that last question. Predictability aside, however, Ticket to Paradise does manage to feel surprisingly fresh with its own conventions, such as avoiding much of the needless drama around the third act including brief break-ups and last-minute rushes to the airport (or, in this case, the ferry to and from the island). Parker, coming off the commercial and critical success of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, respects his characters and his audience enough to not just give them variations of stuff we’ve all seen many times over, and actually allows enough time with these characters to understand all we need to about them so that any later decisions feel natural and not necessarily out of character. For instance, before the main plot kicks in we spend a lot of time with Kaitlyn Dever and Maxime Bouttier as their characters develop their own relationship, and you can see the sparks flying between them to a point where you do start to believe why both of them would be so immediately drawn to each other, let alone develop a bond strong enough to get married within days of meeting each other. They even grow wise to what Clooney and Roberts are getting up to, which gives them an edge over other rom-com couples in that they are actually smart and capable of pointing out nefariousness when it seems to befall them. Both Parker and co-writer Daniel Pipski get considerable mileage out of taking their rom-com plots and characters in their own directions, also making them fun and likeable enough to fully immerse the audience into this sunny, luxurious landscape.
Of course, though, this is the Clooney and Roberts show, and the two are just naturally charming but when together, they form an entirely watchable dynamic duo filled with fast-paced bickering and petty insults (which, admittedly, after a while does get tiresome when that’s what practically all their shared dialogue consists of). It is delightful seeing them revel in these light, comedic roles after a number of years either away from the spotlight or taking on less prolific work, and it looks as though they certainly had fun on-set if the end-credit outtakes are any indication. The movie they’re performing in isn’t especially deep, but that’s part of the charm; much like the director’s previous Mamma Mia! sequel, this is a mere excuse to just have some unpretentious fun and silliness in a beautiful exotic location (with Queensland, Australia filling in for Bali, which was impossible to shoot on due to local COVID restrictions), and if that’s what you’re looking for with a Clooney-Roberts vehicle, then you’ll certainly get your money’s worth.
It is a likeable and endearing film, one that isn’t concerned with gaining awards recognition on the weight of its A-list stars, nor is it trying too hard to be clever about its own rom-com limitations. It just exists without a care in the world, and provides some much-needed fluff in a world that is continuously sinking into depravity. Is it through-and-through grand? Not really, but it’s still a fun time with some charismatic stars in an absolutely beautiful part of the world (or in this case, one beautiful part substituting for another beautiful part). Burt was right: what the world needs now is love, sweet love.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Ticket to Paradise is a charming and sweet rom-com that plays comfortably with what it has, including a predictable but occasionally subversive script, and the undeniable charisma of A-listers George Clooney and Julia Roberts who give it plenty of heart and humour.
