Ticket to Paradise

Ol Parker's effervescent rom-com, starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney, reminds us just how sweet the genre can be.

It’s when Roberts’ immaculately tailored wardrobe has been given so much care to draw a smart, sharp woman with two decades of regret and guilt and self-preservation that it can all be understood in the way a denim jumpsuit is cut across her shoulders. It’s about taking care of those you love, learning to forgive yourself, and embracing the completely terrifying notion of letting yourself be happy for a minute, even if there’s no guarantee of how long it’ll last. It is an original piece of writing only using a handful of ABBA lyrics to create a far-fetched, yet completely magnetic story of motherhood and romance on an exotic island where anything feels possible and no dance move is too embarrassing. In a digital age defined by broken brains having spent too much time on the internet tearing down anything that tries to be nice, romance is almost always undercut by some kind of self-awareness or cynicism to prove you couldn’t possibly be so naive as to buy this really sweet thing — or, God forbid, it swings too far the other way and you’re trudging through treacle for days. But such blinding star power is often wielded misguidedly, feeding into winking nostalgia and self-referential ego stroking as a triumph in itself, opposed to letting these fine actors simply do the work that got them to this point. [Julia Roberts](https://www.indiewire.com/t/julia-roberts/) last starred in a romantic comedy — and it often feels like it’s been almost as long since anybody has made a good one.

Glossy visuals and the star power of Julia Roberts and George Clooney save the day in Ol Parker's 'Ticket to Paradise,' a slender piece of silliness set in ...

Filmed primarily in the Whitsunday Islands off northern Australia owing to Covid-19 restrictions making location shooting in Bali impossible ,“Ticket” is truly given the look of paradise in the beautifully polished widescreen images of DP Ole Bratt Birkeland (“Judy”). The Aussie duo of production designer Owen Paterson (“The Matrix”) and costumer Lizzy Gardiner (“The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”) also make fine contributions toward creating of a place that seems a million miles away from all the worries of the world. Lourd, who played alongside Dever in “Booksmart,” manages some good wisecracks in the best-friend role, while Australian actor Genevieve Lemon scores in a couple of appearances as a talkative plane passenger who shows up on the tourist trail when David would least like her to. When Parker gets his groove on, the picture rocks, such as the sequence in which Clooney and Roberts bust so-bad-they’re-good dance moves to C+C Music Factory’s ’90s floor-filler “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” at a bar after one too many beer pong games. While far from a classic of its kind, this is likely to be just the “Ticket” for general viewers relishing the chance to watch Roberts and Clooney trade poisonous barbs, before being struck by Cupid’s arrow all over again. Complicating matters is the unexpected arrival of Georgia’s younger boyfriend, Paul (a thankless role for “Emily in Paris” star Lucas Bravo), an airline pilot.

George Clooney and Julia Roberts try their hand at an old-fasioned studio romcom for Universal.

With a decades-long rapport on screen and off, they’re natural and sparky together, and Roberts joins Clooney in her decision not to presenting the cosmetically refreshed face of her peers. Whether these inevitably affluent, white fantasy dramas of the nineties and noughties (Four Weddings, Notting Hill, etc) still carry weight with audiences in a post-Covid-19, post-straight, post-splash-the-cash world remains to be seen, although the preponderance of bridal magazines on the racks seems to be a positive indication. Desperate for their daughter not to repeat their own mistake, David and Georgia race to the Indonesian island and form a pact to stop the marriage in its tracks. It aims to take classic Hollywood screwball comedies, drop in Father Of The Bride (to become ‘Squabbling Divorced Parents Of The Bride’) and blend it with a distinct Working Title sensibility in a fake Bali recreated on Australia’s Gold Coast. Universal will be looking to see how that relates to a new gently-ageing generation of film-goers, even though Ticket To Paradise seems unlikely to attract any of their kids. And coast it does, on the good-humoured pairing of George Clooney and Julia Roberts, aiming at 80s and 90s audiences who will be startled to see their toothy, gray-ing matinee idols as parents of a twenty-something law graduate.

George Clooney and Julia Roberts reunite on screen for Ol Parker's romcom. Read the Empire review.

That level of substance means that Ticket To Paradise isn’t quite the all-out screwball jaunt that the trailers present – and though depth to the characterisation is welcome, it feels at odds with moments of artificiality in the filmmaking. [George Clooney](https://www.empireonline.com/people/george-clooney/) and [Julia Roberts](https://www.empireonline.com/people/julia-roberts/) – teaming up for the fifth time on the big screen, a double-whammy of movie star mega-wattage – as divorcées David and Georgia, a couple whose acrimonious split finds them only able to (just about) communicate when it concerns their daughter Lily ( [Kaitlyn Dever](https://www.empireonline.com/people/kaitlyn-dever/)). The beautiful place is Bali, where Lily has gone travelling with best friend Wren ( [Billie Lourd](https://www.empireonline.com/people/billie-lourd/), in a welcome Booksmart reunion with Dever) after finishing her law degree – before swiftly getting engaged to dashing Balinese guy Gede (Maxime Bouttier), much to her parents’ concern. If it’s not a ticket to all-out cinematic paradise, it is at least a ticket back to a genre that’s vanishingly rare on the big screen these days. If you never doubt for a second where Ticket To Paradise is going, the journey there is solidly constructed. Here We Go Again](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/mamma-mia-go-review/), applies the same basic principles to Ticket To Paradise – a rare, throwbacky major-studio romcom that boasts beautiful people in beautiful places as its main raison d’être, while sneaking in deeper notions around familial expectations and intergenerational differences.

'Ticket to Paradise' brings Julia Roberts and George Clooney back for classic destination wedding rom-com banter. Review.

Characters find themselves out of their depth in a beautiful part of the world, navigating new family members, getting acquainted with cultural differences and customs, and building up to the film’s natural finale: the big wedding — think Parker sets up the pieces for the ol’ lovers-to-enemies-then-back-to-lovers arc, throwing bitey dolphins, Georgia’s overly keen boyfriend Paul (a spectacularly silly Lucas Bravo), and rainy nights in the Balinese jungle in Georgia and David’s path. In Ticket to Paradise, Roberts employs the more subtle but confident elements of her rom-com repertoire for Georgia, who emotionally bounces off her co-star Clooney with the greatest of ease. Clooney, meanwhile, hasn't done a romantic comedy since 1996's One Fine Day, and takes on the disgruntled, mansplaining, overprotective dad trope with less ferocity than Robert De Niro in Meet the Parents (who can top an FBI-level investigation hub in a trailer?), but all the mildly perturbed finesse you'd expect. Worrying their daughter is going to end up making the same choices they did 25 years ago, Georgia and David agree to a rare ceasefire to stop the wedding. In roles specifically written for them, Roberts and Clooney play Georgia and David, a bitterly divorced couple who simply cannot be in the same room without arguing through their teeth.