Movie Reaction: Ticket to Paradise

Formula: (One Fine Day + Notting Hill + 20 Years) / Father of the Bride

 

No matter what I do to combat it, reviews will always be prisoners to the moment. I can’t help it. They will always be seen through the prism of the time they were written. And, in this moment, I really want to see charming RomComs with movie stars being winsome. For that reason, I enjoyed Ticket to Paradise.

 

The story itself is pure RomCom. Julia Roberts and George Clooney play the long-divorced bickering parents of Kaitlyn Dever. After graduating college, Dever goes on a vacation to Bali, falls for a boy, and decides to marry him and stay there. Clooney and Roberts begrudgingly form a united front to go to Bali and convince her not to do get married. Of course, close proximity in paradise can ignite old flames. You can guess what happens from there. You’ve seen this movie even if you haven’t seen this movie, and that’s cool with me.

 

The film is directed by Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again director Ol Parker who has landed a career of making light-hearted films in beautiful locations where everyone feeds off good vibes. I’m jealous, frankly. I don’t know what there is to say about the movie, because anyone who will enjoy it already knows if they’ll enjoy it. I can understand having reached your limit already on movies about pretty white people who can apparently afford to take a week (or more) off to hang out in Bali. For me, there are so few movies like that anymore that I was ready for it.

 

Roberts and Clooney are old pros at this as well as old friends. I wouldn’t call their romantic chemistry undeniable, but I sure do like seeing them on screen together in general. I’ve yet to dislike Kaitlyn Dever in anything. I wasn’t super invested in her relationship with Maxime Bouttier’s character. They’re young and attractive though. That’s enough. Billie Lourd is there too as Dever’s best friend just hanging out on the island. The movie doesn’t know what to do with her, but she’s having too much fun to cut her out of the movie. A part of my brain decided to pretend this was a stealth sequel to Booksmart.

The worst thing I can say about the movie is that it’s a comedy of good vibes more than a laugh riot. Really, the only thing this movie was missing was characters randomly breaking into ABBA songs.

 

Side Rant: Ol Parker is 2 for 2 now with movies where the character ages don’t line up. Here We Go Again is insane. I broke that down in that Reaction. Ticket to Paradise isn’t as crazy, but it still doesn’t make total sense. So, Roberts got married to Clooney when she graduated college. Clooney was a grad student at the time. They had Dever soon after. Dever is graduating from Law School, making her about 25. That’s shockingly accurate for Dever, who tends to still be cast as younger characters in other films. However, that puts Clooney (~61) and Roberts (~55) in the 47-50 range for this movie. Honestly, it’s not a big deal. It’s just getting funny to me that Ol Parker doesn’t give a shit about character ages in his movies.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend