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Director Ol Parker’s film before this was Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! Never has a film maker’s previous movie provided such a perfect title for their current one because this is precisely what you may exclaim in early response to this this. Ticket to Paradise is the most laboured, predictable and vanilla production to have seen the inside of a cinema for many many years, perhaps even since the late eighties/ early nineties when this straight, unsurprising and totally devoid of any innovation style of movie might last have been common, at least outside of anything made for kids.

The other area of the medium that we have largely moved past that this still falls right back into is the idea that a film can be entirely sold on the star power of its cast. Seriously this is like a social experiment to see how much a movie can really just rely on the charisma of the people you put in it, and possibly the location you set it in, and not have to have anything else to redeem it whatsoever. The pitch for this seems to have been Julia Roberts, George Clooney, together, Bali, nuff said.

There is genuinely no limits to the subtle and mysterious power of what they have created here. The film even has a blooper reel over the credits, and not a satirical and knowing one like those that Pixar did for a while, I mean a simple, honest to god, no irony, old fashioned blooper reel. My eyebrows most certainly raised at this point but so, goddammit, did the corners of my mouth.

What is surprising is the results of this experiment because it turns out the outcome is remarkably positive. The sophisticated film fan in you might want to fight it but you cannot; Ticket to Paradise is just so incredibly enjoyable. I kid you not, there is a scene around the middle where Clooney and Roberts play Beer Pong, dance and slowly get more and more drunk that might be the greatest movie moment of the year so far. Sure it was thrilling seeing Cruise navigating those mountains ranges and Elvis reborn at his peak was something to behold but nothing on screen has made me smile anywhere as near as broadly as two contemporary screen legends giggling, dancing and throwing tiny balls, for quite some time.

As if to really test their hypothesis they seem to have deliberately linked this to other quality movies. Putting Roberts and Clooney back together is obviously reminiscent of Ocean’s Eleven (not Ocean’s Twelve – that’s an example of how this experiment can go wrong) but it also reunites Kaitlyn Dever and Billie Lourd from the brilliant Booksmart. Even with these superior films in mind though you can’t help but enjoy yourself with this one.

I could tell you about the story but that doesn’t matter, not even to Parker who has just regurgitated the same plot from his aforementioned Abba film.

In the end I am not quite sure how they have pulled this off, the simple pleasures of seeing endearing people on screen doing mildly endearing things shouldn’t be enough but still Ticket to Paradise succeeds. This is actually ranked 18/53 of all the new films I have so far seen in 2022, which for the record is just above The Batman. I genuinely don’t know how they have done it. Maybe it’s voodoo but it’s certainly magic.

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The Ripley Factor:

The only thing that might have broken the spell for me would have been if they had messed up the female characters but they haven’t. Dever’s role is little more than a narrative device but they still give her a considerable amount of agency and Roberts herself is an interesting, flawed but strong woman. She is also fifty five which is worth noting. Clooney is only six years older and it is actually her that is positioned against a younger man at one point. It is possible that this is part of the plan to stubbornly not give audiences what they have generally been used to and still make them appreciate it, but maybe it’s just quietly progressive.