Ticket to Paradise

The romantic comedy has been battered and bruised since the mid-2000s with cynical filmmakers and dumb studio exes trying to reinvent the genre, or make it edgy, or turn it into a tedious meta-commentary on itself. The impetus to be new and daring with the genre may stem from the fact that while the romcom may seem simplistic, it is, in truth, one of the most difficult cinematic structures to master. So when a solid, if hardly outstanding, studio-made romcom with two mature, attractive, much-loved movie stars comes along, it feels like a radical act.

Ticket to Paradise won’t rank high among the annals of memorable Hollywood fluff, but it is an entertaining picture that delivers most everything you go to a romantic comedy for. George Clooney and Julia Roberts play a long-divorced couple that fly to Bali for their daughter’s wedding and must put aside their mutual hatred of each other in order to stop their only child from rushing too soon into marriage as they did. It’s a perfectly serviceable plot for this type of film, and the script taps the bases of each narrative beat pretty much as one would expect—there is real pleasure in that. 

Both Clooney and Roberts bring a relaxed quality to their performances, which is often missing when older movie stars headline modern comedies (like Jane Fonda in Monster-in-Law, Goldie Hawn in Snatched!, or Robert De Niro in The Comedian). An adorable Kaitlyn Dever brings with her memories of earlier, more substantial screen roles (Justified, Short Term 12, Booksmart) that make the daughter character seem far more interesting and intelligent than she probably was on paper. It’s too bad Billie Lourd (as Dever's best friend) and Lucas Bravo (as Robert’s younger boyfriend) play two-dimensional tropes, but the rest of the supporting cast have nice little moments that don’t require them to try and out-funny the leads, which is as it should be.

The gorgeous locations (Australia doubling for Bali) are framed with widescreen compositions that may not break any ground when it comes to mise en scène but feel like they come from the pre-digital era of comedy. Back when photography was used to help set a mood and tell a story rather than how Judd Apatow, Paul Feig, Adam McKay, and their ilk repurposed the camera as devices for capturing as much potentially comedic raw data as possible for later processing in an edit room. The film features some very silly moments and contrived situations that could have been improved upon, but the narrative is not constructed around these weak sequences, so the picture doesn't collapse because of any overdependence on them. Director and co-writer Ol Parker (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) paces the film like an old-school romcom where the ROM is more important than the COM. The film and its stars are able to breathe and stretch so that we actually have time to develop an interest in the characters and the outcome of their story. The amusing dialogue is given ample time to land, and we get to take in the setting and enjoy our time there with these characters.