Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ticket to Paradise’ on Prime Video, In Which Julia Roberts and George Clooney Turn On Their Rom-Com Charm

Ticket to Paradise (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) reunites Julia Roberts and George Clooney for the first time since (checks notes) Money Monster in (checks again) 2016? Wouldn’t think two of the biggest Hollywood superstars of the last three decades would co-headline a Movie We Forgot Existed, but here we are (their previous collabos: a few scenes together each in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and a couple of Ocean’s movies). You’d also think they’d have been cast together in a romantic comedy by now, but director/co-writer Ol Parker’s Ticket is indeed a first for the pair. Now here’s hoping it’s more memorable than their last outing.

TICKET TO PARADISE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Georgia (Roberts) and David (Clooney) have radically different memories of the day he proposed to her, 25 years ago: He remembers being suave and romantic, she remembers being underwhelmed. The marriage lasted five years, and to say it was ugly is to call a typhoon a light sneeze. Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) happened during that span, and now she’s graduating from law school, and here are Georgia and David at the ceremony, sniping away at each other like a couple of sitcom/rom-com characters. They bicker over every little thing: “It’s not a metaphor, it’s an armrest,” he quips at one point.

Lily’s plan is to hang out in Bali with her bestie and fellow grad Wren (Billie Lourd), then head to Chicago where she’s been hired by a big-time law firm. But fate intervenes when they’re left behind by a tour boat and rescued by Gede (Maxime Bouttier). He pulls Lily aboard his trawler and they look into each other’s eyes and then we get a subtitle reading 37 DAYS LATER and a poor woman is stuck in the middle seat between Georgia and David on a flight to Bali for the wedding. They finally agree on something: Lily’s moving too fast and she’s ruining her life so they therefore must ruin her wedding. “Lockstep,” they repeat to each other, even though you know damn well there will be instances of one doing something shitty and throwing the other under the bus for it.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Georgia and David are awful people. They’ve been bitter and miserable and goddammit, their daughter will be the same come hell or high water. There’s a little culture-clash/shock as they meet Gede’s family, and then the sabotage begins. David plants some seeds of doubt in Gede’s mind, although the kid – a career seaweed farmer, by gum! – seems to be too shrewd to give them purchase. Georgia, meanwhile, steals the wedding rings from a child. Of course, the scenery, gorgeous in every stinking shot, stands in mighty contrast to their behavior, made all the more putrid because they’re all sneaky and passive-aggressive. They may be secretly hurting, or they may just be a-holes, but one thing’s for certain: Nobody’s stuffing them into a cannon and shooting them out to sea to be eel fodder like they deserve.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: If I’m not mistaken, Matthew McConaughey got bit by a dolphin in Failure to Launch, one of the most egregiously awful rom-coms of this, or any, century. Cross that with wannabe Grant/Hepburn snappy interplay between Clooney and Roberts, and you’ve got yourself a case of whiplash with this one.

Performance Worth Watching: Roberts puts a little extra substance into her character where Clooney keeps it shallow – although neither one is given much to work with in this script.

Memorable Dialogue: A typical exchange:

David: You know, for once you could back me up.

Georgia: I could, but then I’d be wrong too.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Parker and Daniel Pipski’s screenplay doesn’t come close to meeting the star power of their leads, and that’s a damn shame. Millions were spent to acquire two Hollywood heavyweights so they can: Exchange witless banter. Participate in a scene in which Clooney is bit by a dolphin. Get ripping drunk and dance like idiots to “Jump Around” and other ’90s hits. It’s excruciating. And Parker’s idea of slick, cagey direction is to frequently use split screens to illustrate the great disamicableness of Georgia and David’s relationship. Is that a word? “Disamicableness”? If not, it’s awkward and clunky off the tongue and absurd but not particularly funny, yet is quite apt considering the context, and should be coined for this very occasion.

Not all of Ticket to Paradise is so easy to dislike. The rest is generally tepid, its mediocrity made all the more noticeable because we’re sitting at attention waiting for Clooney and Roberts to do something that matches their upper-crust talent level. The plot is contrived, and we’d give it a pass if our leads ever had something funny to say. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn Dever, a gifted young talent who was so terrific in Booksmart, is given nothing to do, a wisp of a character who you’d think would be Dealing With Some Shit considering the endless nasty repartee between her parents. The supporting cast is similarly adrift – Lourde, daughter of the late Carrie Fisher, is given a typical wacky-promiscuous-drunk side character to play, and Lucas Bravo, playing Georgia’s French airline pilot boyfriend, must act paralyzed after he’s bitten by a snake.

Parker keeps the tone light but unmemorable, shifting away from the silliness of earlier scenes to a slightly more serious tone for the third act, when he shovels in some semi-liquid sentiment in the hopes that it’ll ooze into your cracks and settle in and maybe make you feel something. Are Georgia and David actually ol’ softies underneath their cynical exteriors? Are they destined to rekindle the flame that’s long been smothered by their insufferable cruelty? Could I care less? Not really.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Ticket to Paradise is a movie you’ll forget existed – and a hugely wasted opportunity.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.