Mega star power of Clooney and Roberts brightens formulaic 'Ticket to Paradise'
“Ticket to Paradise” - ★ ★ ½
If your idea of a good time at the movies only requires that two charismatic veteran stars trade passive-belligerent barbs for an hour, go amusingly crazy during a wild Ping-Pong drinking game, and cap a suddenly serious rom-minus-the-com with a lame freeze-frame, then director Ol Parker has just the “Ticket to Paradise” for you.
Julia Roberts and George Clooney - reuniting again after their three “Ocean's” films and 2016's “Money Monster” - provide enough star wattage to power this mediocre, formulaic vehicle through thoroughly safe and predictable territory tailor-made for the AARP demographic.
They play David and Georgia, married for a scant five years before their dream house burned down and apparently incinerated their marriage.
Twenty years later, the two must set aside their mutual hatred and join forces (they call it being in “lockstep”) to sabotage the plans of their college-graduate daughter Lily (a charming Kaitlyn Dever) to marry Gede (Maxime Bouttier), a young and handsome seaweed farmer she met 37 days earlier in Bali while on vacation with her bestie, Wren (Billie Lourd).
Despite wanting to present a united front, David and Georgia can't stop sniping at each other.
“You could back me up!” David complains.
“Then I would be wrong, too!” Georgia replies.
Inconveniently, Georgia's new and considerably younger boyfriend (“lover” doesn't seem to fit), a well-meaning but vacuous airline pilot named Paul (“Emily in Paris” star Lucas Bravo) arrives on the beaches and almost instantly goes down on his knee to propose to her.
(In creatively crippled formula rom-coms, women rarely get to choose between two suitors of equal appeal and sincerity. One always must be totally wrong for her or be hiding a secret that renders him an inferior choice. We easily see this. Georgia doesn't for a long time, until her daughter bluntly points this out to her.)
As David and Georgia fumble through various silly schemes to thwart the marriage, such as stealing the wedding rings and psychologically undermining Gede's commitment to Lily, we are treated to spectacular views of Bali's tropical landscapes (actually filmed on the Whitsunday Islands off Australia) and luxurious settings worthy of being featured on ABC's “Bachelor in Paradise.”
“Ticket,” written by Parker and Daniel Pipski, moves briskly along while Roberts and Clooney exchange scowls and clever potshots. But the moment Lily discovers her parents' betrayal and her fiance's apparent complicity in silence, the movie turns glum and serious. Cue the obligatory thunderstorm and downpour to signal the change.
Lily's woefully underdeveloped best friend Wren (Dever and Lourd worked together in Olivia Wilde's “Booksmart”) keeps popping up here and there, mostly so the main characters have someone to confide in. She has only one friend, but no family. No romantic interests of her own. No character arc.
She seems to be pointlessly shoehorned into scenes with little to actually do.
In a weird development, she even comments on this.
“Can we make this a little more about me?” she meta-whines near the closing scene.
Of course, this isn't her movie.
It belongs to Clooney and Roberts, polished mega stars working in clockwork tandem, creating double exes who feel authentically estranged until they allow that tiny seed of suppressed affection to germinate and grow into something we can see coming from the opening scene.
A little love at first fight.
Starring: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Billie Lourd, Maxime Bouttier, Lucas Bravo
Directed by: Ol Parker
Other: A Universal Pictures release in theaters. Rated PG-13 for language, suggestive material. 104 minutes