Directed by: Ol Parker
Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Billie Lourd, Maxime Bouttier, Lucas Bravo
Romantic comedies tend to fall into patterns which can either work smoothly or make events deadly predictable. Ticket to Paradise has several romcom standards at play: (feuding ex-spouses, insults, deception, and of course the ex-spouses falling in love again). None of these are surprises nor are they meant to be. There is a comfort level in that, so it comes down to execution. Ticket to Paradise is graced with two megastars in the title roles who could do this material in their sleep, but thankfully choose not to.
Clooney and Roberts are engaged and engaging as the feuding exes David and Georgia Cotton who can't stand to be in the same room together following their divorce years ago. When they occupy the same vicinity, they exchange quips, putdowns, and battle in verbal volleyball. They first are forced to sit next to each other during their daughter Lily's (Dever) graduation from law school. Lily then takes a vacation with her best friend Wren (Lourd) in Bali, a tropical paradise where she meets and falls immediately in love with local boy Gede (Bouttier). Thirty days later, Lily and Gede are engaged and Lily is looking to eschew a law career to seaweed farm in Bali with Gede. David and Georgia are horrified. After all, they just dropped a fortune on law school and now Lily doesn't even want to be a lawyer. They travel to Bali, uniting forces to undermine Lily's upcoming wedding so she doesn't make the same mistake her parents did. You know, getting married?
David and Georgia are intelligent people who resort to sophomoric behavior in order to cause Lily and Gede to doubt themselves and each other. Even though they are rough on each other, we know David and Georgia will call a truce, talk, laugh, and fall in love again. They will also think twice about trying to destroy their daughter's nuptials, which of course they do because they never come across as anything but mostly nice people. The material is light and slight, to the point that we wonder why Clooney and Roberts needed to star in it. Because it was filming in a tropical haven, maybe? It is to Roberts' and Clooney's credit that they put as much energy into Ticket to Paradise as they do. They could've just phoned it in. Now my last question: When you have a wedding in Bali, where do you go for a honeymoon?
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