On paper, Ticket to Paradise sounds like just another one of those rom-coms that Netflix keeps churning out. Month after month. Year after year. You know the one I’m talking about. The movies where pretty people find themselves in exotic locales and get caught up in all kinds of romantic hijinks. Love and Gelato, The Wrong Missy, Love Wedding Repeat, Holiday in the Wild, Love in the Villa, Operation Christmas Drop, A Perfect Pairing, A California Christmas, Resort to Love, Falling Inn Love, A Castle for Christmas, and on, and on, and on. The list is seemingly interminable. Most are terrible. One or two are serviceable. And none of them are particularly memorable.
Ticket to Paradise is a movie that is the sum total of its elevator pitch. It does exactly what it says on the tin. Nothing more. Nothing less. Julia Roberts and George Clooney play a pair of squabbling divorcees who drop everything and fly to Bali when their daughter tells them that she’s found the love of her life there and is going to marry him. Concerned that she’s throwing away her future, they put their petty differences aside and form an unlikely truce in order to sabotage her wedding.
It should be middling. It should me mediocre. Only it isn’t. It’s actually fun. And for two reasons: Julia Roberts and George Clooney.
The Last Hollywood Stars
Which is why this isn’t so much as a review as it is a mash note to these two Hollywood darlings. Yes, this is their fifth time teaming up on the big screen together, but it is actually their first bonafide rom-com. And it is an all out charm offensive. Whether they’re sniping at each other or plotting together, both Roberts and Clooney are effortlessly charismatic. Their banter and bickering is infused with so much chemistry that it is impossible to not be delighted.
Does it matter that neither of them seem to sweat in the absolute humidity of the tropics? Or that Julia Roberts’ hair never seems to frizz up, even after a night out in the jungle? Did I care that the golden beaches of Australia looked very little like the Bali I know and love? Or that the movie played into every “white person in Asia” trope? Not one bit. I was more than willing to suspend all of my disbelief and just get lost in this mindless escapist fantasy. Why? I’ll tell you why. Julia Roberts and George Clooney.
Director Ol Parker, who has made a somewhat successful career from directing movies exactly like this one (see: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, etc.) doesn’t rock the rom-com boat in any way. He doesn’t have to. He knows how to make a meal of Julia Roberts and George Clooney. Yes, there is a message here about familial expectations as well as interracial and intergenerational differences, but all of that is merely fodder for Roberts and Clooney to do what they do best.
In many ways, Ol Parker’s genius was in doing as little as possible with this movie. I’m not sure if that was a conscious or an unconscious decision, but it served him well. Sitting back and letting Roberts and Clooney just be themselves is the only reason Ticket to Paradise works. I mean, you wouldn’t get in the way of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne would you?
To be clear. This is a movie that is so reliant on its two leads that you begin to feel the drag whenever the both of them aren’t on screen. So it’s a good thing that it doesn’t happen too often.
Can’t Help Falling in Love…
Ticket to Paradise is in no way a classic. There are commier roms and rommier coms. If the leads of this movie were, say, Brooke Shields and Steve Guttenberg for example, or Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey even, it would be a complete dud. But I didn’t have to worry about that, because these 104 minutes were packed full of Julia Roberts and George Clooney goodness. Which is exactly the kind of joyous cinema experience I was looking for.
Every rom-com requires the avoidance of critical thinking. You need to buy into the ridiculous notion that swapping homes for the holidays could lead you to true love. Or that two people from different sides of the country could find each other atop the Empire State Building and live happily ever after. You need to believe in romance. You need to be in love with the idea of being in love. Only then can you enjoy Love Actually for what it is. Or sigh at the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral without being a cynical bastard.
Ticket to Paradise is far from perfect, but it is nevertheless an utterly charming throwback to a genre that I’ve missed watching on the big screen.
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