Ticket to Paradise

George Clooney, Maxime Bouttier, Kaitlyn Deever and Julia Robets in “Ticket to Paradise.”

Armon Shokri Universal Pictures photo via IMDB

Like a kinder, gentler answer to the Emmy-winning “The White Lotus,” “Ticket to Paradise” joins the ranks of comedies about things that can go wrong when beautiful people vacation in beautiful places.

It's as pleasant as a tropical breeze, and just as slight. Considering that it buzzes with the high wattage Oscar winners George Clooney and Julia Roberts generate just being in the same frame, you might wish for something more substantial. Then again, it's the only movie in the box office top five that was actually made for grown-ups.

It looks like it was fun to make. Pictures of Julia and George could be in the encyclopedia entry titled “Beautiful People.” They get to fly off to Bali (actually played by Queensland, Australia), spend weeks cracking each other up, call it work and get paid gazillions of dollars just for good measure.

They play long-divorced and hardly amicable David and Georgia Cotton, who have spent the decade and a half since their split in different time zones, trying to stay as far apart as possible. They're forced back together by the seating chart when their beloved daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Deever) graduates from college. Awkward! The caustic barbs fly nonstop, all the way to the airport where they put Lily and her boozy roomie Wren (Billie Lourd) on a plane for a well-earned Bali vacation before Lily starts her career with a prestigious law firm.

Their good riddances to each other can't come soon enough, but are short lived. A few weeks after her departure Lily emails that she's marrying an adorable local seaweed farmer named Gede (Maxime Bouttier) she met when he saved her from being lost at sea. The Bickersons are forced to join forces again and get to Bali ASAP to stop her from making the same mistake that ruined their lives.

Obviously, suspension of disbelief is required (over and over) in the film's script, cowritten by director Ol Parker and Daniel Pipski. Real people don't get their lives ruined and come out of it looking like George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

Once they arrive at their heavenly destination, their plots to scuttle the young lovers keep backfiring. When they meet Gede's wonderful, and quite large, extended family, they don't get to read the subtitles and realize they're the punchline of the joke. Even when they do sublime things like swim with dolphins, everyone knows it's not going to end well. 

At least since Shakespeare’s time, the first rule of romantic comedy is that the audience knows from the start what will take the warring pair five acts to realize, much less admit. Enter Paul (Lucas Bravo), the dashing Frenchman who wants to marry Georgia. Being a commercial pilot is convenient, allowing Paul to show up on the island, too.

Georgia doesn't like surprises like that, or surprises, period. Neither do the screenwriters apparently, as there aren't any in the script. Instead it relies on predictability and resort schtick. The old room switcheroo. The luau where the haolies gets drunk and do embarrassing things on the dance floor. The heart-to-hearts with bartenders serving umbrella drinks in open air bars overlooking moon glow on the ocean. Sunrises … sunsets … gorgeous beyond belief …

The movie's funniest moments come when George and Julia mug and dance through a drunken round of beer pong against the kids. There's virtually no dialogue besides their daughter begging them to stop. Despite being likened to our times' Tracy and Hepburn in the film's early media hype, it's a reminder that those screen immortals had better writers providing their wit. This film may take place in an exotic faraway locale, but its problems are definitely First World, more urgent in places like Brentwood or Beverly Hills than anywhere else on the planet.

The comedy's not without its pleasures, like a slow boat to China. Hey, if you put George and Julia on screen together, what's not to like? But while it does provide a ticket to Paradise, it's clear that the audience is flying coach while the stars are having a ball up there in first class.