Film Review: Clooney and Roberts know exactly what to deliver in Ticket to Paradise 

The ridiculously attractive leading pair who are not only rom-com veterans but have long established an on-screen chemistry, with their ‘sniping and fighting’ playing out against the lush, idyllic backdrop of an exotic island.

Ticket to Paradise

★★★★☆

Bali is the destination in Ticket to Paradise (12A), where recent law college graduate Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) meets local seaweed farmer Gede (Maxime Bouttier) and promptly decides to marry him, much to the dismay of her divorced parents, Georgia (Julia Roberts) and David (George Clooney).

Joining forces for the first time in 20 years, the bickering Georgia and David arrive on Bali to implement a Trojan Horse strategy, according to which they smile and nod and pretend to support Lily in her decision to marry Gede, all the while secretly scheming to drive a wedge between the young lovers.

It was Prussian Field Marshal von Moltke who noted that no plan survives first contact with the enemy; and when your plan involves entering into cahoots with the mortal enemy who broke your heart two decades previously, you’re on a hiding to nothing.

Unless, of course, your plotting inadvertently fans the flames of your dormant lust...

Written by Ol Parker and Daniel Pipski, with Parker directing, Ticket to Paradise ticks a lot of boxes: ridiculously attractive leading pair who are not only rom-com veterans but have long established an on-screen chemistry, with their ‘sniping and fighting’ playing out against the lush, idyllic backdrop of an exotic island. Clooney and Roberts know exactly what to deliver, and they do so in considerable style, both showcasing superb comic timing as they endlessly squabble and wrangle, each scoring points off the other in an endless zero-sum war of words.

All of which is terrific fun for aficionados of rom-com bloodsport, but there’s a poignant aspect to it too as Lily (given an understated reading by Kaitlyn Dever) gets caught in the crossfire, her plight — that of being pulled back and forth between competing parents — undercutting the breezy tone by hinting at the long-term impact of divorce on an only child.

(cinema release)