‘Ticket to Paradise’: Is the Rom-Com Dead?

‘Jeez, just look at them,” marveled my brother as we plunked down at the screening for writer-director Ol Parker’s Ticket to Paradise and gazed up at the glowing still of George Clooney and Julia Roberts on the big screen. “What do you think? The new Tracy and Hepburn?” Well, maybe. Clooney and Roberts are definitely both beloved movie stars and old pros, and they know how to put grown-up chemistry across, even if they don’t exactly burn up the screen. But Tracy and Hepburn made a whole bunch of movies together, and they weren’t all classics of the form. Adam’s Rib, this isn’t — except maybe in its use of a couple of professional types (Clooney’s David is an architect, Roberts’s Georgia is an art dealer) whose marriage takes a beating. In this case, there were five years and a daughter before things went bust, and that’s the high concept here: Now the daughter has gone and fallen in love while on a post-college summer sojourn in Bali, and they both want to stop her from making the sort of impetuous-young-thing mistake that they did.

The account of their own post-college engagement is related via carefully timed cuts between his version and hers. It’s a solid introduction to the characters, but right away, Clooney gets the better of things: His narration may be tinged with vanity, but Roberts’s suffers from a whiff of contempt. The former may, in small doses, serve as part of one’s charm; the latter is just off-putting. And charm is the point here, the overwhelming force that Parker needs to carry you through the frequently sloppy storytelling. The charm of Julia Roberts flashing her famous smile and having to accept a translated compliment about looking like a very attractive horse. The charm of someone referring to Georgia’s new boyfriend as “an upgrade” over grumpy, graying but still George Clooney–handsome David. The anti-glamour of Pretty Woman in a twill jumpsuit; the goofiness of Danny Ocean drunkenly jumping around on the dance floor. Charming!

ML

About the Author

Matthew Lickona

Matthew Lickona is a writer and editor living in Southern California. From 2010 to 2019, he was a film critic for the San Diego Reader.

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‘Jeez, just look at them,” marveled my brother as we plunked down at the screening for writer-director Ol Parker’s Ticket to Paradise and gazed up at the glowing still of George Clooney and Julia Roberts on the big screen. “What do you think? The new Tracy and Hepburn?” Well, maybe. Clooney and Roberts are definitely both beloved movie stars and old pros, and they know how to put grown-up chemistry across, even if they don’t exactly burn up the screen. But Tracy and Hepburn made a whole bunch of movies together, and they weren’t all classics of the form. Adam’s Rib, this isn’t — except maybe in its use of a couple of professional types (Clooney’s David is an architect, Roberts’s Georgia is an art dealer) whose marriage takes a beating. In this case, there were five years and a daughter before things went bust, and that’s the high concept here: Now the daughter has gone and fallen in love while on a post-college summer sojourn in Bali, and they both want to stop her from making the sort of impetuous-young-thing mistake that they did.

The account of their own post-college engagement is related via carefully timed cuts between his version and hers. It’s a solid introduction to the characters, but right away, Clooney gets the better of things: His narration may be tinged with vanity, but Roberts’s suffers from a whiff of contempt. The former may, in small doses, serve as part of one’s charm; the latter is just off-putting. And charm is the point here, the overwhelming force that Parker needs to carry you through the frequently sloppy storytelling. The charm of Julia Roberts flashing her famous smile and having to accept a translated compliment about looking like a very attractive horse. The charm of someone referring to Georgia’s new boyfriend as “an upgrade” over grumpy, graying but still George Clooney–handsome David. The anti-glamour of Pretty Woman in a twill jumpsuit; the goofiness of Danny Ocean drunkenly jumping around on the dance floor. Charming!