With the arrival of autumn and the approach of the time change, there is no question of sulking about your pleasure: ticket to paradise (VF of Ticket to Paradise), by Ol Parker (Mama Mia! Here We Go Again), is a charming film that does good by putting a smile on your face. But. We were hoping for champagne for the reunion of Julia Roberts and George Clooney on the big screen. We are served sparkling wine.
The two megastars, who shared the poster in Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Money Monster (2016), here embody David, a renowned architect, and Georgia, a high-flying art dealer. They were married 25 years earlier, divorced five years later. Not without having become the parents of a little Lily. Who is now a brilliant young woman, played by a brilliant young actress… here in a very thin role (Kaitlyn Dever, seen in Booksmart and in the series unbelievable and dopesick).
A freshly graduated lawyer, she goes on vacation to Bali, where she meets none other than the man of her life (the Franco-Indonesian Maxime Bouttier). The wedding is organized hot. Arrival of the parents – whose piquant, scathing and amusing misunderstanding we got a taste of in scenes that the trailer meticulously divulges. Their intention: to prevent their daughter from making the mistake they made a quarter of a century earlier. And these two enemies lock themselves into a metaphorical “Trojan horse” in order to undermine the wedding.
Heaviness and clumsiness
To tell this, a screenplay co-written by Ol Parker and Daniel Pipski, which presents awkward breaks in tone, plunging the romantic comedy into the dark waters of introspection: David and Georgia think back to their past, (over)analyze their decisions of ‘ then and show their regrets (nice for their daughter, right?). And what about the strategies imagined by these two brilliant people to derail the marriage, except that they are silly and not very original, and the adventures made to divide a couple (and, by the gang, to bring another closer)… otherwise that some, which make no sense, are victims of poorly thought-out cuts.
Then, of course, hats off to this desire to put – sometimes in very close-up – on screen a middle-aged couple who do not try to hide wrinkles and imperfections caused by the passage of time. Hats off, too, for having imagined a romance between Georgia and Paul — an airline pilot with a heart as big as… let’s call it his naivety, embodied by Lucas Bravo (Emily in Paris), who is 20 years younger than Julia Roberts. Except that this relationship is treated in the mode of parody and slap stick and that there is zero chemistry between the two actors. Ouch.
In short, impossible, in front of such a poster, such places (the landscapes are simply grandiose then, go go go for sunsets and sunrises!) and such untapped potential, not to think about the recent The Lost City, of Aaron and Adam Nee, where the formidable complicity between Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum was not enough to make memorable this pale reflection of Romancing the Stone.
At the arrival, ticket to paradise turns out to be a romantic comedy that lacks humor and romance. Which does not stand out either by its realization. Who bets on its stars and again on its stars – which, let’s give them back what is theirs, are beautiful to see go. Except that all this, as charming and friendly as it is, is very quickly forgotten.