Ticket to Paradise

➤ Rated PG-13
➤ Theaters
➤ S4 / V4 / L5*

Seeing George Clooney and Julia Roberts bicker with each other in the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise feels like a blast from the past, even though they’ve only starred together in a handful of films, and never in a rom-com. This throwback film was long overdue.

David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) are proud of their hardworking daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), but the divorced couple can’t stand each other. After Lily and a friend set off to Bali to celebrate their graduation, Lily falls in love with a handsome local seaweed farmer.

Lily and her new love, Gede (Maxime Bouttier), decide to get married after having known each other for only a month. David and Georgia arrive in Bali for the wedding, and they agree to set aside their animosity and work together to keep Lily from throwing her life away. Of course nothing goes according to plan.

Clooney and Roberts provide Ticket to Paradise with megawatt star power, but the film possesses a comfortable familiarity that extends beyond the enjoyment of seeing the stars together.

The formulaic script works in the movie’s favor. Sure, David and Georgia should sit Lily down to have an adult conversation about marriage before escalating straight to high jinks, but that’s not the rom-com way. Fans of the genre know where all this is heading, but the journey is too delightful to pass up.

Ticket to Paradise has some strong language, but it avoids raunchiness. The film also highlights the spirituality and marriage customs of Balinese Hinduism, but it’s refreshing to watch a movie that affirms marriage as an institution between one man and one woman forever.

*Ratings from kids-in-mind.com, with quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high