Despite being a rather generic title, there have only been four previous films (documented in the database, at least) with the title of Ticket to Paradise. In 1936, it was a movie centered on that tried-and-true trope of the lead character getting amnesia. Except, rather than being a comedy, like, say, Desperately Seeking Susan, it was rendered a drama in the hands of Nathanael West (who Eve Babitz was right to talk shit about for making his money off California while simultaneously deriding it—which also smacks of Joan Didion, but anyway…). The second was a 1961 “romance” feature set against the backdrop of an Italian resort (fake, to be sure, and called “Palmos”). Then there was a 2008 documentary of the same name that tells the “touching, tragic and at times humorous tale of strong, decisive women who see themselves as entrepreneurs in a globalized world rather than victims of poverty and prostitution.” Following that, there was 2011’s Ticket to Paradise, with still another less than paradisiacal premise: “A teenage girl running away from her father’s sexual harassment meets a young rocker who has escaped to Havana with his misfit group of friends.”
Which brings us, at last, to 2022’s Ticket to Paradise. At a time when the premise to such a title should present a plot even more deliberately and antithetically bleak than ever, Ol Parker’s addition to the pile is unabashedly “jubilant.” Or outright schmaltzy for those who do not have the stomach for rom-coms. And yet, there is no denying that, even after all these years, Julia Roberts remains the queen of the genre, proving yet again that she has the ever-dwindling-in-subsequent-generations “it” factor. That ability to shine and outshine any clunky dialogue or ingenue of a co-star. In this case, that would be Kaitlyn Dever, not George Clooney. Roberts, who turns fifty-five at the end of October, is also surprisingly age-appropriate for sixty-one-year-old Clooney, who usually favors larger age differences with his romantic counterparts, including his own real-life one, forty-four-year-old Amal Clooney.
In any event, male writer-directors apparently still know what women want more than they do, as Parker and co-screenwriter Daniel Pipski take us on a journey with freshly-graduated Lily Cotton (Dever) and her best friend, Wren Butler (Billie Lourd)—who embodies the one-dimensional cliché that is the drunk hot mess to counteract Lily’s “good girl who studies hard” persona. So hard, in fact, that she’s already secured a job at a law firm in Chicago. Which just leaves one more summer of frivolity for her to sow her oats as she embarks upon a vacation with Wren to Bali. A place that Julia Roberts must secretly have in her boiler-plate contract as part of what will sell her on participating in a movie (see also: Eat Pray Love)—even if filming was actually done in Australia… close enough, to the untrained eye of the hoi polloi.
But before that jaunt, we’re given a glimpse into the combative dynamic between Lily’s parents, David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts), who have been divorced for roughly twenty years. Having made it through only five years of marriage, they’ve done their best to sidestep each other without getting Lily caught in the crossfire—but, obviously, she does. Yet another reason to advocate for “harmonious co-parenting” (a term that sounds a lot like “conscious uncoupling”). Lest the venomous parents damage their precious spawn’s psyche. Which is a real shame as it’s theoretically and literally the only thing they have to show for their bitter years of marriage. In any case, after being left no choice but to sit next to each other at Lily’s graduation, it’s clear their so-called contempt for one another is just a new variation on that old Hepburn/Tracy theme: the “vicious” banter that ultimately unveils itself to be a product of love. For one can’t be that passionate about someone if there’s no love in the mix—hence, that old chestnut: there’s a fine line between love and hate.
Something David and Georgia are about to be taught in a big way after foolishly believing they won’t have to see each other for a very long time a.k.a. until Lily’s next major life event. Which, yes, would technically be marriage. It’s just that neither parent imagined it to be happening so soon. But, little do they know, their fates are in the hands of the same man who brought us Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Which is why we must control our vomit reflexes when Lily and Wren are rescued by a handsome seaweed farmer named Gede (Maxime Bouttier), who just so happens to pass by their totally deserted part of the water after being abandoned by their tourist boat in the midst of taking a swim. Further suspension of disbelief is required when we see Lily having a proverbial “love at first sight” moment, laying it on real thick as she stares in a trance at Gede, who lifts her up first onto the boat. From that day and night onward (after quickly “consummating” things), Lily is struck with the epiphany that her whole life has been a lie, and that all the things she’s been pursuing—namely, being a lawyer—are merely by-products of wanting to please her parents. But no more, Gede has shown her the light (read: his dick), and she’s never going to go back into the darkness again. Of course, she could have simply just watched the “Don’t Be A Lawyer” song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and learned the same lesson. The same goes for Annie Banks (Kimberly Williams) in the 1991 version of Father of the Bride, except with being an architect.
Incidentally, that’s what David’s métier is in Ticket to Paradise, but the connection to Father of the Bride is far more pronounced than that mere nuance, with Parker’s movie also playing up the Father of the Bride-level disapproval and sabotage-by-subterfuge element. Except, unlike George Banks (Steve Martin), David has the overwhelming support of his (ex-)wife in the endeavor. A woman, who just like George, feels that Lily is making the worst mistake of her life. In fact, the very same mistake she made when she chose David over going to Los Angeles to work in an art gallery (which she presently does, owns one in her own name, as a matter of fact) after graduating from college.
So yes, one might find that Ticket to Paradise is actually a better update to the Steve Martin edition of Father of the Bride than whatever that trash heap Andy Garcia was trying to peddle earlier this year (let’s just say that some erstwhile Ocean’s 11 cast members haven’t been faring as well as others). And, in many ways, Bryan (George Newbern) in Father of the Bride is the Gede of Ticket to Paradise, trying to level with George by admitting to him when they first meet, “You know, driving down here, I tried to put myself in your place. Your daughter comes home after spending four months in Rome, and I’m sure you couldn’t wait to see her, and she shocks you with the news that she’s getting married.” In response, George, just as David and Georgia, tries to present himself as cool, aloof and otherwise “totally fine” with the swift courting period and impending nuptials, but behind the scenes, he’s trying to dig up any dirt he can on Bryan and his family. The Cottons (specifically, Georgia) will, instead, decide to hide the rings necessary to perform a sacred and traditional ring ceremony before the actual wedding, thereby inciting major “bad omen” vibes. Even George Banks wouldn’t stoop that low.
But honestly, that’s about the worst thing the Cottons try to attempt. Everything else is just foreplay between David and Georgia, who is technically spoken for by her younger boy toy, Paul (Lucas Bravo, seemingly omnipresent these days). And while dating a younger man is meant to make an “older” woman feel younger, it seems Georgia is having a crisis of faith about her age… and the looks associated with that age (at one point, she tells David, “Maybe I’m too old to feel young”). Especially after being told by one of Gede’s family members that she looks like a very beautiful horse (a compliment that feels as though it should have been reserved for Sarah Jessica Parker).
Nonetheless, she still certainly gets the job done for David, who gives her “compliments” about how she’s still in her prime. And yet, even if she weren’t, Georgia has been given the benefit of forever being seen in his eyes as someone young, for that’s what she looked like when they first met—the moment a person gets frozen in time by their lover’s gaze. Unless, of course, you’re Fred Mertz glancing at Ethel.
David’s long-standing devotion to Georgia comes through in small details (as it does for her—for instance, why has she never gone back to her maiden name?), like the fact that he’s been single for most of his post-Georgia life. Or when he tells Wren, who joins him late one night at the hotel bar (in a moment that might go a very different, far more perverse way if this were another type of movie), that his relationship ended for the same reason that all relationships do: “At first it felt unreal, and then it got real.” In other words, they didn’t work hard enough to bring back the “fantasy flair” of the honeymoon period now and again.
Which is why being in Bali—a proverbial “fantasy land”—together starts to stoke the old flames. Particularly after they challenge Gede to a game of beer pong… using the strong moonshine-esque alcohol Gede says is a customary drink as a substitute for beer. Lily, meanwhile, finds it hard to watch her parents slip so easily and shamelessly into their past, acting like college kids once Wren instructs the DJ to put on something more “age-appropriate” (this, naturally, means C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat [Everybody Dance Now]” and House of Pain’s “Jump Around”). As they dance and revel in their triumph over Gede, who is about to yak from having to drink so much, one thing especially marked about the scene is how it pits the true grit of older generations (this includes Gen X now) against dainty and hyper-sensitive Gen Z.
And Lily turns out to be expectedly sensitive indeed when she invariably discovers the missing (read: stolen) rings in her mother’s bag (Roberts being no stranger to playing a wedding saboteur; see: My Best Friend’s Wedding). This occurs after they get marooned on a remote part of the island without Gede’s boat (which David didn’t tie securely, so it drifted away). Lily lets loose under the circumstances by accusing them of being just like every other parent, trying to correct their “mistakes” through her. After which she traipses off in a huff. To this point, Ticket to Paradise is very much a “parents’ movie,” with mothers and fathers alike surely prompted to blush over resonant lines about how a parent will so often do anything for their child except let them be themselves, make their own choices.
So maybe, even more than Bali, it’s Lily that brings them back together (for Hollywood does so love an exes reuniting story). This is what we already know is bound to happen before even going into the movie. It’s what we expect. Like watching Dahmer, we already know how this is going to end. And yet, in contrast to something of Dahmer’s nature, it’s actually pleasant, frothy escapism rather than the dark form that’s been in fashion of late.
With a movie poster that shows Roberts glancing lovingly up at Clooney as he looks into the distance perhaps “surrenderingly,” it’s clear there’s something to the idea that an idyllic location can bring out the best in people (except obscenely rich ones; see: White Lotus), and the love they have for one another—buried as it might have been for decades. And sure, some might brand that as “saccharine” or nothing more than “a very thin plot,” but Roberts and Clooney have certainly been in less worthwhile rom-coms before and still carried it off (for Roberts, America’s Sweethearts, and for Clooney, Intolerable Cruelty, centered on a similar premise [penned by the Coen brothers, among others] in terms of divorced exes “hating” each other).
That’s the unique gift of their “breed,” their star caliber. Part of the last of Nouveau Golden Age Hollywood (the 90s) when it was far easier to sell an audience on whimsy and romance without trying to put a coat of “realness” on it (as a movie like Meet Cute recently attempted). For, in the present, the veil has been totally lifted on how unrealistic such portrayals are. Yet somehow, we still want to believe in the unapologetically straightforward rom-com that Roberts and Clooney remain capable of delivering.
