George Clooney and Julia Roberts' new movie 'Ticket to Paradise' is a rom-com throwback
George Clooney and Julia Roberts' new movie 'Ticket to Paradise' shows how, from "His Girl Friday" to "Love Actually," Hollywood love and fantasy has evolved.
Centering on Julia Roberts and George Clooney, two great, aging stars of rom-coms past, “Ticket to Paradise” was always going to be a throwback. But in a fun twist, the movie’s two couples end up giving us a brief tour through the history of the entire genre, highlighting how Hollywood’s preferred love story has shifted as well.
The movie’s two couples end up giving us a brief tour through the history of the entire genre, highlighting how Hollywood’s preferred love story has shifted as well.
Clooney and Roberts play David and Georgia Cotton, a long-divorced couple. Their daughter, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), celebrates her college graduation by leaving with her roommate Wren (Billie Lourd) for a vacation on Bali. Lily plans to just stay in Bali temporarily before returning to the states and law school. But instead she falls in love — at first sight, naturally — with seaweed fisherman and generally beautiful human Gede (Maxime Bouttier). David and Georgia stop bickering long enough to agree on one thing: They need to stop Lily from leaping into a marriage right out of college, as they did 25 years ago.
The divorced couple who reconcile is an old rom-com trope. As in, really old. It significantly predates Clooney classics like “Out of Sight” (1998) or Roberts’ “Pretty Woman” (1990). The heyday of the divorce romance was some 60 years before those pictures, in the era of screwball comedies. Iconic examples include the Cary Grant and Irene Dunne vehicle “The Awful Truth” (1937) and Howard Hawks’ “His Girl Friday” (1940) with Grant and Rosalind Russell.
Clooney has often been compared to Grant, and director Ol Parker refers to these old-style rom-coms quite deliberately as he plays with retro rapid-fire dialogue in many of the Clooney-Roberts exchanges. (“Worst 19 years of my life.” “We were only married for five.” “I’m counting the recovery.” Rim shot.)
Rating: 5