What do you get when you mix Father of the Bride (especially the new on from HBO Max), Momma Mia (but with no music) and those episodes of The Brady Bunch when they went to Hawaii? I’ll tell you what… it is the new film starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, Ticket to Paradise.

This movie could not have been more predictable if it tried. I, literally, could have sat down and written out just about every main beat of the story that happened in this film. If you have seen the trailer to this movie, it played out exactly as you would expect.

Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), after graduating from college and before joining a law firm, travelled to Bali on vacation where she met a charming young man, Gede (Maxime Bouttier) with whom she fell in love. After about a month, she sent a message to her divorced and constantly bickering parents Georgia (Julia Roberts) and David (George Clooney) that she was going to get married.

Unlike their relationship over the last several years, Georgia and David agreed that Lily was too young to make this decision and that she would be throwing her future away. Georgia and David decided that they would head to Bali for Lily’s wedding with the expressed purpose of bringing her home. They would pretend to be fine with each other and the marriage in order to sabotage from within to protect Lily from making the same mistake that they had made 25 years prior.

At this point, if you have watched any of the movies like this one, you should know exactly how this was going to turn out. However, just because something is obviously predictable, does not make it bad. Though there was nothing that surprised me along the way, Ticket to Paradise was still entertaining enough.

The biggest reason this movie succeeds over the predictability is out two main actors, George Clooney and Julia Roberts are charming as all get out and, even though you see where this was going, you didn’t mind being taken on the ride because of them.

Clooney and Roberts had very good comedic timing and made some of the typical scenes considerably more electric than they had any right to be. There was also a ton of chemistry between them, both when they were battling with barbs or bonding over the positive memories that they had.

Kaitlyn Dever and Maxime Bouttier were a nice addition, very likable and sweet. In fact, perhaps it was too sweet at times.

Ticket to Paradise was a cute, sweet, at times funny movie that was as predictable as it could be, but anchored by two major stars that provided a better experience because of who they were.

3 stars