We have a tragedy on our hands.
Ticket to Paradise seemed to have it all: a glimmering location, a light-hearted story, and, to top it all off, two of the greatest movie stars of all time. With Julia Roberts and George Clooney at the helm, Ticket to Paradise was set to be an all-inclusive cruise full of good times. Add in the director from Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, two of the Booksmart ladies, and the hunk from Emily in Paris—what’s not to love?
This movie. This movie is not lovable in nearly any way, unfortunately. I wasn’t hoping for Ticket to Paradise to be Ocean’s Eleven-meets-When Harry Met Sally, but after watching its charming trailer over and over again, I expected to have a little fun. Maybe it’d be a little like Marry Me-meets-My Best Friend’s Wedding. I can have a good time, even with a cheesy overload. Unfortunately, Ticket to Paradise really doesn’t deliver.
This is because Ticket to Paradise fails to be either romantic or comedic. Part of the blame lies on how flimsy ground the romance stands on. Don’t be fooled: The romance plot in Ticket to Paradise does not follow divorced parents Georgia (Roberts) and David (Clooney). Instead, it hinges on their daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who plans on marrying Balinese seaweed farmer Gede (Maxime Bouttier) just a month after they meet on her trip to the gorgeous Indonesian island. Their romantic arc is thrown together like slops. Lily and Gede meet, he shows her his seaweed farm, and suddenly, they’re engaged. Her parents are obviously not happy about it, so they hop a plane to Bali in the hopes of stopping her. Great! Now, quick, get us back to the George Clooney and Julia Roberts of it all!
Because, yes, the reason Ticket to Paradise exists is for us to see Julia Roberts and George Clooney bicker on an airplane (and still hold hands while turbulence shakes them around). We’re all ready to relish in the sweet relief that is their teaming up to take down their daughter’s whirlwind wedding. The problem is, there’s nearly nothing for George and Julia to work with here. Georgia is an art dealer who gave up her entire life to be with David, an architect who promised to bring her a home full of life. When that home literally burned to the ground, they divorced. More than a decade later, they hate each other. They can’t stand to even be in the same room together.
Now that their daughter wants to throw in the towel on her future legal career for a guy she barely knows, Georgia and David have something they can agree on. They’re both worried she’s making the same mistake they did—getting married to someone too quickly, before you’ve seen them at their worst. And they’re right: She is! Lily wants to move to a foreign country after a one-week vacation and marry a man she’s just met. This isn’t logical in any sense. Sure, I sound like a grump, but when it comes to romantic comedies, it's only fun to suspend disbelief if they’re fun and fantastical enough. Ticket to Paradise is neither.
Worst of all is Lily and Gede have no romantic chemistry. Both Dever and Bouttier are pleasant enough on their own—the former just showed off her rom-com chops last week in Hulu’s Rosaline—but their actual relationship comes about too quickly to ever be convincing. The two rarely get time alone on screen together to put a spell on the audience. What Ticket to Paradise doesn’t understand is that we want to see Lily and Gede together and in love—sure, Clooney and Roberts are great, but they need a good enough pass to deliver a layup. Without solid rom-com ground, Ticket to Paradise rings hollow.
Not only does she have zero chemistry with her fiancé, but Lily also never proves to have much of a connection with her parents either. Most of the time they spend together is limited to the parents conniving against the daughter. Show us Kaitlyn Dever and Julia Roberts having mother-daughter time at the beach! Even near the end of the film, when everyone has kissed and made up (not really a spoiler!), we don’t get much actual family love. Lily invites her dad to the dance floor after the wedding ceremony, but we don’t see them actually get there. Show us the dad moves! Give us the father-daughter dance! There’s only an ounce of time devoted to Lily’s relationship with her parents, which makes the whole premise of the movie fall flat.
Any delights to be had only appear in the most random corners of the movie. When Emily in Paris star Lucas Bravo appeared as Georgia’s teddy bear boyfriend Paul, the whole theater gasped in joy. His comedic timing shocked me; he’s a complete treasure that the Netflix show should use more. Georgia and David’s plane-mate Beth-Ann (Geneviève Lyons) and maid of honor Wren (Billie Lourd) also deserve shoutouts, even if Wren’s entire personality is being an alcoholic. And, for some reason, there’s a recurring gag about wild animal mishaps in Ticket to Paradise, which happens to be slapstick bliss.
Still, when Ticket to Paradise is bad, it’s really bad. The film has already received backlash for taking place in “Bali,” when, in actuality, all filming took place in Australia. This tension comes into play when the family visits cursed temples, haggles in the city center, or attends traditional ceremonies in the jaw-dropping coastal setting—everything’s fake. Perhaps one might look past this if Ticket to Paradise were only a vacation tale; it is not. It’s a story of exoticism, in which a young, white American woman decides to settle in a faraway land after the natives’ peaceful lives intrigues her.
Though the film tries to show some respect for the Balinese people, ultimately, it fails when it ultimately signs off on wealthy white Americans shacking up quickly with foreigners and moving to their country, based only on an idealistic notion of it. Again, it’s all fun and games, but Ticket to Paradise isn’t all that fun to begin with.
My whole heart wants to say that George and Julia’s chemistry carries the whole movie and makes it at least worth a watch. Alas, this is not the case. Most of the runtime leans on their relentless arguments, as if we want to see them snap at each other for a whole hour before they make peace. When Georgia and David finally set aside their differences for their daughter’s sake, Ticket to Paradise gives a glimpse of the glitzy brilliance that could have been. A neon-lit beer pong game between the elder and younger couples is full of escapist joy. What fun to watch Julia Roberts, hair extraordinaire, giggle at George Clooney, a sweaty mess, drunkenly dance in his chinos until the hangover starts to arrive.
But there’s not enough charisma in the world to power the boring script of Ticket to Paradise. There’s no yearning, an accessory Julia Roberts expertly sports in My Best Friend’s Wedding, nor is there the exquisite glamor of Notting Hill. Roberts’ chemistry with Clooney recreates what they had in Ocean’s Eleven, but without any actual excitement or stakes, why are we watching? If we wanted to see George and Julia, our old pals, goofing around, we could just watch videos from the press tour for this film. As much as I wanted to add Ticket to Paradise to my lengthy list of rom-coms to watch over and over again, unfortunately, I’ll have to resort to those promo YouTube clips and Ocean’s Eleven instead. What a shame.
Ticket to Paradise premieres in theaters on Oct. 21.
