One person’s paradise is another’s circle of hell, particularly if that person has an aversion to rich American tourists and movies that resemble glossy corporate videos. Such, sadly, is the case with Ol Parker’s Ticket to Paradise, which sends Julia Roberts and George Clooney to Bali where it proceeds to pose them beside the swimming pools and flower beds of a luxury island resort. One assumes that everybody involved had a fabulous time; the production amounts to a lavish paid vacation. How the rest of us benefit is anyone’s guess.
Naturally the film is at pains to conceal its hand, merrily insisting that the protagonists are actually in Bali under duress and would really rather be doing anything other than guzzling cocktails and cavorting with dolphins. That’s because Clooney and Roberts play bickering divorcees, ostensibly on a mission to sabotage their daughter’s betrothal to a local seaweed farmer. But they’re kidding nobody, perhaps not even themselves, since the script makes it clear that these two are secretly still in love and that the upcoming wedding is not the real romance here. The course of true love rarely did run smooth – except in this instance, when it could be travelling on greased rails.
Hold your nose and squint your eyes and you have an inkling of what Ticket to Paradise dearly wants to be: an old-school Hollywood screwball in the vein of The Awful Truth or My Favourite Wife. Maybe Cary Grant and Irene Dunne could have made this fly, although even they may have required more grit, more rigour and a director less easily seduced by every white sandy beach and golden sunset that he sees. Clooney and Roberts try their best but they’re finally not much more than decoration themselves, the filmic equivalent of plastic figurines on a cake.
