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(from left) George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Ol Parker’s Ticket To Paradise.<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\nIt would be easy to shrug away Ticket to Paradise<\/em> as something mild and airy that goes down smooth\u2014an easy pick for an airplane watch, or if you’re ever stuck in a hotel with basic cable. But you will find no such pussyfooting here. This movie stinks, truly stinks, and the fact that it had the component parts to be a winner makes it all the more frustrating.<\/p>\nGeorge Clooney and Julia Roberts, the last among a certain kind of Hollywood A-lister, play estranged couple David and Georgia. He is an architect, or something, because we see him stomping around a construction site with a hardhat, and it’s unlikely that he’s tying steel. We see Georgia at her enormous LA gallery, mocking the modern art that she’s selling. (\u201cI think it’s upside down,\u201d she says. I believe I saw a similar gag on The Flintstones<\/em>.) The point is they are both super successful, but we never see them talking about their work and they’ve got the time to disappear for a while without checking in or taking meetings or anything. I can barely do that and I write about movies on the internet, for God’s sake, that’s a notch below dog catcher.<\/p>\nRead more<\/p>\n
Their daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) has just graduated from law school, so as a gift to herself before starting work at a big firm she’s taking her best pal Wren (Billie Lourd) on a trip to Bali. (Wren is bringing an enormous supply of multi-colored condoms.) While there, Lily becomes enchanted by a hunky seaweed farmer (it happens!) named Gede (Maxime Bouttier), and soon thereafter she sends a message back to her parents: I ‘m getting married.<\/p>\n
While David and Georgia truly can’t stand to be in the same room together, they agree to present a united front\u2014they will fly to Bali and try and knock some sense into their daughter. They concoct the strategy to appear <\/em>to be cool with the decision, but sow seeds of doubt.<\/p>\nStory continues<\/button><\/p>\nThere’s nothing about this that isn’t fertile ground for a good old fashioned screwball comedy. The problem is that director Ol Parker, who co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel Pipski, seems completely allergic to jokes. Bring a microscope with you to a screening of Ticket to Paradise <\/em>and report back if you can find anything funny. Is Dever shouting \u201cDad, you’re embarrassing me!!\u201d while Clooney mugs and shakes his rump to C+C Music Factory considered humor? Maybe to those who have given up on movies it is.<\/p>\nClooney, it has been well established, has comedy chops, but there’s only so much he can do with no written material. He contours his voice and smirks, weaving his head to put as much spin as he can on barbs and would-be witticisms, but this gets tiresome after about 10 minutes. His zings at his ex-wife eventually paint him as an unlikable jerk. Roberts’ abundant natural charisma is lost, unfortunately, when she’s portraying just another wealthy white woman in paradise.<\/p>\n
Kaitlyn Dever, so very funny in Booksmart<\/em>, has a one-note character here: she is defined by being in love with her new boyfriend. Why? Well, he’s handsome, and he seems committed to a mellow life harvesting seaweed in a very photogenic spot. He’s also madly in love with her, but he’s got even less motivation. She’s straight-up boring, and you need to figure that vacationing college grads come in by the busloads, no? There’s nothing about her that stands out. If anything, Billie Lourd’s character has 10 times the personality (and dresses with more panache, too.) It just feels like someone sketched \u201cthey are in love\u201d on a first draft of this screenplay and never got back around to filling it in.<\/p>\n