3.0 out of 5 star rating<\/span> <\/span> <\/div> <\/div> Take an idyllic overseas beachside location where a young bride is planning her dream wedding, add parents in the throes of cat-and-mouse conflict, and what have you got? Hands down if your answer is Mamma Mia!, although while mercifully free of that film\u2019s menopausal karaoke, Ticket to Paradise nevertheless slavishly adheres to conventional, instantly recognisable rom-com tropes.<\/p>\n
George Clooney is go-getter Chicago architect David, long divorced from Julia Roberts\u2019s sophisticated Los Angeles gallery owner Georgia, the couple\u2019s paths crossing only in matters concerning their law student daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever).<\/p>\n
Having lived separate lives for 15 years, viewers first see them crash into each other\u2019s orbits at Lily\u2019s graduation ceremony, the antagonism of old quickly bubbling to the surface (\u201cJust for once, I wish you would back me up,\u201d barks David during one prickly exchange. \u201cBut then I\u2019d be wrong too,\u201d retorts Georgia, matter-of-factly).<\/p>\n
Fast forward a couple of months and Lily\u2019s post-graduation holiday romance with Bali seaweed farmer Gede (Maxime Bouttier) has blossomed into something much more serious. Still blowing on the burned fingers of their own catastrophic plighting of troths, the father and mother of the bride-to-be rush to the pictureseque Indonesian province, to throw a spanner in the works of their lovestruck offspring\u2019s nuptials.<\/p>
Thus, the scene is set for adversaries forming an uneasy alliance to prevent the apple of their eye from repeating their own mistakes, the supposedly wiser elders\u2019 course of action less about persuasion than it is sabotage.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s little need to outline the route the plot takes from here, because what follows is a by-the-book, curveball-bereft yarn with sparks flying all too intermittently, a smidgen of half-hearted slapstick (two<\/em> scenes involving animal bites), and the occasional uncomfortable dig at foreigners and their funny ways.<\/p>\nClooney and Roberts are terrific, though, their combined star power beaming with the breezy chemistry we didn\u2019t see enough of in their last joint outings as estranged spouses, 2001\u2019s Ocean\u2019s Eleven and its 2004 sequel.<\/p>\n
Both appear to relish the acid-tongued sparring, not least on the flight to Bali (with Georgia\u2019s current, much younger squeeze Lucas Bravo as their pilot), and when a low-key night out with their future son-in-low descends into let-loose drunken dancing to club hits from their own twenties.<\/p>\n