Directed by: Ol Parker
Written by: Ol Parker and Daniel Pipski
Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Maxime Bouttier, Sean Lynch, and Billie Lourd
Runtime: 104 minutes
Maybe don’t pack your bags. ‘Ticket to Paradise’ is a forgettable trip.
“We’ve waited so long. We’ve waited so long. I got two tickets to paradise. Won’t you pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight.” – “Two Tickets to Paradise” (1978) by Eddie Money
George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Movie audiences haven’t “waited so long” for a Clooney-Roberts collaboration. These two megastars have connected on the big screen for years, dating back to 2001.
For starters, “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001), “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004), and “Money Monster” (2016), and Julia starred in a provocative supporting role in “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” (2002), director George Clooney’s compelling biopic on “The Gong Show” host Chuck Barris. Incidentally, Ms. Roberts played a villain in “Confessions”, possibly for the first time in her career.
In “Ticket to Paradise”, director/co-writer Ol Parker’s rom-com, Julia and George are on-screen antagonists, in a way.
David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) are the bitterly divorced parents of their only child, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), and they – separately, mind you - support their little girl in every conceivable way.
Well, Lily isn’t a kid any longer. She graduated from law school!
To celebrate, she and her bestie Wren (Billie Lourd) – a party animal who carries a combo-vibe of Natasha Lyonne’s Jessica from “American Pie” (1999) meets Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli – take a trip to Bali, a beyond gorgeous tropical spot, sitting eight degrees south of the equator.
It’s time to P-A-R-T-Y, at least before Lily starts her job as a high-powered lawyer in Chicago. What are Wren’s plans after college? Who knows, but perhaps it will involve “some tasty waves (and) a cool buzz.”
Wren does serve a purpose. Other than about 20 minutes of amusing, argumentative (and some celebratory) banter between George and Julia throughout the picture, Lourd adds a few more comical lines in the first act.
Unfortunately, Wren’s usefulness ends soon after, and the filmmakers don’t give the woman much to do.
Anyway, during the girls’ trip, Lily meets a local, Gede (Maxime Bouttier). He’s an attractive and industrious seaweed farmer, and the two have a Boy-meets-Girl moment that results in a marriage proposal.
Hey, that’s sweet, but David and Georgia try to break up Lily and Gede, so their daughter can start her law career in Chicago.
Once the unhappy divorced pair arrives in Bali, the film shifts from Lily’s folks bickering with one another - which delivers some genuine laugh-out-loud moments – to nonsensical and patently unfunny schemes where the rents conspire to sabotage their daughter’s impending marriage.
(In their eyes, Lily is throwing away her career on a guy she met 37 days ago.)
George and Julia’s obvious chemistry as squabbling divorcees doesn’t entirely fade during their time in the tropics. Parker and co-writer Daniel Pipski construct a couple of hilarious moments, like a beer pong contest, and it seems that the larger-than-life actors improv a bit.
However, the film also includes groan-inducing, painfully unfunny scenes like a dolphin attack and an unplanned camping overnight in the wilderness that feel better suited for an Adam Sandler flick.
For the most part, the last hour stages an endless array of David and Georgia’s tired monologues and exchanges about Lily’s future and the said daughter’s monotonous analysis of her relationships with Gede, Wren, and her rents. Meanwhile, composer Lorne Balfe overlays the will-they-or-won’t-they-get-married premise with a syrupy score that accentuates David’s, Georgia’s, Lily’s, and Gede’s attempts to pour every ounce of their beings into this “monumental” decision.
This all begs the question: Do we care?
Ms. Dever is 26 years young, but she seems a lot younger on-screen, like 19, and Kaitlyn doesn’t convey that Lily’s a mid-20-something who just finished three grueling years of law school. Lily seems like a kid who just finished her freshman year. Does she know where to buy her textbooks? Just asking. Even though Gede seems like a responsible, sensitive, and thoughtful guy, Kaitlyn gives all the vibes of an inexperienced college student jumping into a relationship.
In other words, David and Georgia have a point.
Conversely, if you buy what Lily is selling, maybe “Ticket to Paradise” will work well for you, especially since George and Julia get a prime opportunity to frolic on holiday! Hey, grab a glass of wine, a designated driver, and enjoy!
Either way, Parker and the film’s producers probably hired the Bali Tourism Office as consultants because in between the aforementioned characters agonizing over this wedding like it was an Israel-Palestine peace treaty, the movie tries to hypnotize the audience with about 100,000 drone shots of this Indonesian island.
Hey, Bali is a dazzling place, but it’s not mesmerizing enough to ignore that Wren says she’s known Lily through four years of college when law school takes only three. Also, Lily and Wren meet Gede under duress because their boat left them while scuba diving – like in “Open Water” (2003) - but the girls didn’t sport scuba-diving equipment. They just had a couple of snorkels, so how long were they underwater when the boat mysteriously left? More importantly and simply put, this Clooney-Roberts project needs more laughs and a lot less grandstanding over awfully familiar family dynamics.
Maybe don’t pack your bags. “Ticket to Paradise” is a disposable, forgettable trip.
Jeff’s ranking
2/4 stars
