'Ticket to Paradise' shouldn't be so depressing
Universal
This silent dialogue seems to be occurring between George Clooney and Julia Roberts throughout the bizarrely unpleasant “Ticket to Paradise”:
GC: We’re really doing this, aren’t we?
JR: Doing what? I’m just on vacation in Bali.
GC: No one told me I’d have to pray. Eat, love, yes. But I have limits.
JR: [Laughs]
GC: I did see you say that the “Ticket to Paradise” script was the reason you’re doing your first romantic comedy in ages. That was a joke, right?
JR: [Laughs] [Long pause] It was.
GC: Just total crap.
JR: Did you see “Duplicity”? I really liked that, but no one saw it, so I don’t know. It’s good to see you.
GC: Lovely to see you.
As this conversation is going on, what’s not happening is the necessary warmth that is supposed to exist down, down beneath an onslaught of bickering between long-divorced David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts). They’ve have traveled to Bali for their daughter Lily’s (Kaitlyn Dever of “Booksmart”) wedding to Gede (Maxime Bouttier), a local who she met about five weeks ago and for whom she has decided to throw away her just-acquired law degree. The script by director/co-writer Ol Parker (“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”) never considers that Lily might subconsciously want to distance herself from her parents’ embarrassing and petty sparring or that thinking that Bali is a beautiful place is not exactly a unique perspective. The idea that Lily feels at home in a fantasy-like environment, where money is of no concern (of course seaweed farmer Gede’s family just signed a deal with Whole Foods, so they’re set) and questions about the future don’t exist, minimizes the supposed depth of her bond with her fiance.
That’s far from the biggest problem, though. “Ticket to Paradise” fails because Parker seems to have vaguely remembered the interpersonal conflict of old Hollywood romantic comedies (talking ‘40s, not ‘90s, BTW) and filled the movie with immature, unfunny foolishness with the assumption that we’ll find it charming just because of who’s on screen. Meanwhile, the decades-long resentment doesn’t even hinge on much of anything, and the sense of escapism most people probably want from a movie like this disintegrates at the first of about 500 pathetic barbs tossed between the stars.
Notions of love and forgiveness are rarely as superficial or irritating. Have you seen “Sleeping with Other People”? “Obvious Child”? Even the unjustly despised Roberts vehicle “I Love Trouble”? Mere seconds of any of those are more welcome than “Ticket to Paradise,” for which you deserve a refund and Eddie Money deserves a settlement.
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