2 minute read
Novel setting
BY RANDAL C. HILL Some movies are all but predictable, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t good, enjoyable films. Was there ever any doubt about the outcome of the beloved Rocky when we all flocked to theaters nationwide to vigorously cheer on a bloody and battered Sylvester Stallone, who painfully hauled himself off the mat again and again? No. We all knew how that story would end. Or what about Titanic, the first movie to gross one billion dollars? Never did we hear of any shocked theatergoer exclaiming, “Hey! Wait a minute! The ship is going to sink?” Ticket to Paradise is as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow, but it also looks to be a fun rom-com romp with two of Hollywood’s most bankable names lighting up the big screen. In starring roles, we have George Clooney (once named “the Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine) and Julia Roberts (People has called her the most beautiful woman in the world five times). The film fun begins right away, when an overseas jet shows us Clooney and Roberts (at ages 61 and 54, respectively, and both still impossibly good-looking) thrown together on a flight to Bali. (Filming actually took place in Queensland, Australia.) In a clever bit of exposition, an exasperated Roberts asks a passing
steward to allow her to sit elsewhere, as she and Clooney used to be married. This prompts George to grumble, “The worst 19 years of my life.” Julia immediately corrects him. “We were only married for five.” “I’m counting the recovery,” was Clooney’s dour response. The paper-thin plot revolves around the ex-couple’s concern that their daughter is rushing headfirst into a marriage with a foreign young man she has just met and is in danger of throwing away a promising career. (Apparently this is what Julia’s character did herself 25 Image from IMDb years earlier, when she tied the knot with George, a man she barely knew.) After the exes deplane and sit together at an outdoor bar, Roberts suggests, “As much as it will pain us both, we need to call a truce to make this work.” Clooney, squelching grumpiness, agrees. In the meantime, daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) is having a blast on the island with her best pal, Wren (Billie Lourd). It may be worth the price of admission just to see a tipsy Clooney in a nightclub doing what could be filmdom’s dorkiest (and most embarrassing) “dad dance.” This prompts embarrassed Lily to exclaim to her friend, “I’m praying for an asteroid.” Ticket to Paradise opens on October 21. See it. Have fun.
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