I’ve said before, I don’t understand my friends that want to watch a bad Schwarzenegger or Rock movie where things explode every second. They say, “I know it’s not a great film, but I like to turn off my brain and just escape for a few hours.”
I just can’t do that with goofy action pictures, although it’s a lot easier to escape reality if it’s two stars as charming as George Clooney and Julia Roberts, in a beautiful locale. It’s not to say this isn’t any less stupid than those crazy action pictures. Even the title of this movie is lazy – Ticket to Paradise. One, it makes me think of the Eddie Money song. Two, it makes me think of a great 2006 movie D.B. Sweeney wrote and starred in that nobody saw. Three, isn’t a title like “The Bali Breakup” much more intriguing?
But there’s no point attacking the title of the film, when it has other problems.
Georgia (Roberts) and David (Clooney) Cotton are a divorced couple that hate each other, but decide to team up to try and stop the marriage of her daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who just months earlier graduated from law school. She’s only known her fiance for 37 days, so they decide to sabotage the wedding. Didn’t Roberts already try this in My Best Friend's Wedding? And just like that movie, the problem is her character isn’t likable enough for us to root for.
Now, there’s a smartly written scene where David talks with Gede (Maxime Bouttier) the young man on the beach, expressing his concerns, and talking about his daughter someday getting bored and leaving him. It was well done, but it made me wonder – instead of sabotaging their daughter, why not pull her aside and say, “This guy rescued you from the ocean. People often fall for guys that save their life. Also, you’re marrying him after knowing him for only 37 days. The odds of a marriage lasting after knowing somebody for such a short time are probably under 5%. So if he’s this perfect guy and you want to stay in this ocean paradise – and I’ve now seen both and can see why you’d want to – the guy has dimples and looks like a young Henry Golding – but if he’s the perfect guy, stay here for a year. You just did a great job finishing law school and are probably burned out. Take a year off, live in this paradise with this perfect guy. If in a year, he and his family are still perfect – you’ll have our blessing. If you’re going to get married now, after such a short time, it would be absolutely ridiculous for you to ask your mom and I to support you and be here for it. We won’t.”
Instead, they resort to stealing the wedding rings and other shenanigans. Although, once the rings are stolen, the way Gede (Maxime Bouttier) approaches him about it is smartly written. And there are a few jokes that are fun. Listening to David talk about a Trojan horse scenario and “Now is the point where we get out and start killing everybody” is hysterical; although it did need a few more jokes.
Lily is with her best friend Wren (Billie Lourd), who needed better lines/scenarios than just carrying around 100 condoms and trying to pick up every guy she meets.
Another character is Georgia’s younger boyfriend pilot (Lucas Bravo of Emily in Paris). The way he’s always being the perfect guy, and always surprising her by just showing up at various places – seems to have been stolen from a criminally underrated romantic comedy I saw in 1988 called A New Life. Alan Alda and Ann-Margret get divorced after a long marriage and start dating again. She meets a much younger guy that starts smothering her, and even surprises her on an airplane when she was kind of relieved to be flying out of town on business to get a break from him for a few days. That movie (also with Mary Kay Place and Hal Linden) didn’t get the best reviews, but I enjoyed it. And, I hate to admit…my wife and I also kind of enjoyed this. As hokey as it was, you know what you’re getting, and it’s a fun enough escape for an hour and a half.
This is written and directed by Ol Parker, who gave us the highly overrated The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and the horrible Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again. He got lucky by having a pair of actors that have three Oscars between them, and shooting a script in such a beautiful location. I thought there were too many close-ups that were unnecessary, and more humor and nuance should have been injected into the script.
When the movie starts with a graduation ceremony, and the two exes both trying to one-up each other as they scream stuff from the stands – it’s just such an idiotic way to start things (although it makes for some fun bloopers in the closing credits).
There’s a fun, annoying airplane passenger that pops up a few times. If this movie was done in the ‘80s or ‘90s (which it feels like), she would have been played by Edie McClurg (“Ferris Bueller is a righteous dude”).
But I’m not going to deny, I was smiling as the old couple gets excited beating younger folks at beer pong, while they jump around to House of Pain and old school hip-hop songs.
When Clooney pokes his face up, as he’s about to hunt a wild boar, it’s fun (and reminded me of him snooping in The Descendants).
A few jokes I’ve seen before (a guy in a hospital hearing people talk about him behind a curtain), it’s very predictable, but it still worked.
If you saw the trailer and thought this looked like a movie you want to see, you won’t be disappointed.
My wife and I left with smiles on our faces, even with her saying “That was really close to being a bad Hallmark movie.”
2 ½ stars out of 5.