Ticket to Paradise

Trying to coast on the effortless charm and charisma of its two stars, Ticket to Paradise takes us to a familiar destination.

As you might expect, the constant string of sarcastic barbs between George Clooney and Julia Roberts as a divorced couple forced to coexist for their daughter’s impending nuptials produces a few zingers.

However, no amount of bickering can disguise the inevitable outcome — this is an old-fashioned Hollywood romantic comedy, after all — of this breezy rather than gritty exploration of fractured families and middle-aged gender dynamics.

The bitterness hasn’t softened between David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) since they ended their five-year marriage almost two decades ago.

They can’t even share an armrest at their daughter’s college graduation. It seems the only thing they can agree upon is the need to sabotage the wedding of Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) to a seaweed farmer (Maxime Bouttier) she met on a postgrad vacation in Bali.

That’s where Lily intends to have the ceremony and settle down once she withstands the ire of her parents, laced with closed-minded views of class and culture, over such an impulsive decision.

When David and Georgia arrive — after sharing the same row on the airplane, of course — they inadvertently take out frustrations regarding their own failed relationship on Lily. They won’t embrace her happiness until they find a way to thaw the ice between them.

That comes with a little help from adjacent bungalows, abundant alcohol, and a dance club playing C&C Music Factory, even as Georgia is wooed by a French airline pilot (Sean Lynch).

Reteaming on screen for the first time in almost two decades, Clooney and Roberts make Ticket to Paradise more amusing and alluring than it probably should be. In addition to acting goofy for the sake of nostalgia, they’re able to sell some of the quieter, more intimate moments, too.

British director Ol Parker (Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again) uses the lush tropical scenery to try and disguise the cutesy predictability. The film only half-heartedly incorporates Indonesian culture and customs, denying the indigenous characters any meaningful depth or complexity.

The result seems like a fun vacation for the actors, but while they enjoyed the sun and the beach, all we got was this lousy movie.

Rated PG-13, 104 minutes.