‘Ticket to Paradise’ Breathes Life into Rom-Coms

Romantic comedies died off in the 2000s. Now the genre is trying to make a comeback. Will bringing back 90s rom-com icons, Julia Roberts and George Clooney, bring the genre back to life?

There is no doubt that romantic comedies are not as popular as they used to be. In the 1990s, rom-coms were considered to be box-office contenders. Movies like Sleepless in Seattle, Runaway Bride, and Pretty Woman ruled the theaters with their sappy romance and witty humor. “Ticket to Paradise” brings audiences back to the 1990s by focusing on the relationship between divorced parents.

In the film, Julia Roberts and George Clooney play divorced parents who get brought together by their daughter’s wedding. They decided to call a truce as they race to Bali to stop their daughter Lily from marrying a man she’s known for a month. Lily’s parents attempt to sabotage the wedding to prevent her from making the same mistake they made 25 years ago. The film touches on topics of love, marriage, and the effects of divorce. It makes the audience question whether the parents are sabotaging the marriage to protect their daughter or if they are stopping the marriage because they see Lily and Gede as a reflection of their younger selves.

They do not want their daughter to make the same mistake they did. Georgina (Julia Roberts) and David (George Clooney) experienced love at first sight. They married within a short amount of time and regretted it. Georgina and David were married for 5 years, and they’ve been divorced for 14 years. Their marriage did not end on good terms which is shown throughout the film with their sarcastic and snarky remarks.

In one particular scene, George and Julia find out that their daughter bought them adjacent seats on the plane. Julia calls over a flight attendant to request a new seat because she can not sit next to George: since they used to be married. George tells the flight attendant that it was the worst 19 years of his life.

Julia tilts her head and says, “We were only married for five.”

George looks at the flight attendant and says, “I’m counting the recovery.”

George Clooney and Julia Roberts on the airplane

The teasing and sarcastic remarks show off the chemistry of the characters and how the actors naturally prefer to communicate. Julia Roberts stated that teasing is their natural rhythm of communicating. Whether it is off the screen or on the screen you can see the actors roasting each other. Since Julia and George naturally make fun of each other, their characters Georgina and David exude chemistry.

Modern rom-coms are missing chemistry. The relationship between the characters often feels forced like they are following a script. You do not know why or how the characters ended up together. They just end up together because of the script. Failure to Launch is an example of a rom-com without chemistry.

In the film, a young man (Matthew McConaughey) falls in love with a beautiful woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) who was hired by his parents to convince him to move out. Due to a poorly written script and subpar acting, the audience does not understand how the characters fell in love. If the audience does not believe in the relationship then the movie is not a successful rom-com. The audience should understand why the characters fell in love even if they do not necessarily believe the characters should be together.

In Ticket to Paradise, the audience believes in the chemistry between Julia and George.

While watching the film, you do not doubt the character’s relationship with one another. You believe that they are a divorced couple with tension, built-up resentment, bitterness, and sadness. The characters are believable.

“It’s a charming, engaging, heartwarming romantic comedy that managed to bring out adults in great numbers to see the incredible chemistry between Julia Roberts and George Clooney, “said Jim Orr, president of domestic theatrical distribution for Universal Pictures. “Almost two-thirds of our audience was over 35, which is not the easiest demographic to get that kind of a number.”

Julia Roberts and George Clooney are popular rom-com icons from the 90s. Their star power drew people into the theaters while their acting kept the audience engaged. Ultimately, star power gave Ticket to Paradise an advantage over other rom-coms with less popular actors.

Bros is a rom-com that suffered from lack of star power. The film revolved around the love story between two men, Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner) and Aaron Shepard (Luke Macfarlane). Billy Eichner says the film flopped because ‘straight people just didn’t show up.’ However, their profits indicate that a large portion of their audience also did not show up.

Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane are less popular than their competition. Other films like Black Adam and The Lost City would attract a larger audience because their fan base is much larger. Dwayne Johnson in Black Adam, Sandra Bullock, and Channing Tatum in The Lost City attract larger audiences. In addition, Bros was at a disadvantage because they did not have the star power to bring in a large audience.

However, Bros ultimately failed because of poor marketing. The marketing team sold the film as game-changing and historic. The trailers rarely presented the film as a rom-com. By not presenting the film as a rom-com, they lost the majority of their audience.

Ticket to Paradise understood who they were marketing for and how they wanted to do it. In the trailer, they set the expectations for the film. The viewer understood that they were going to follow the relationship of divorced parents who made a truce to sabotage their daughter’s wedding. Their daughter told them not to be passive-aggressive or argue, so they started to pretend like they were getting along. After pretending to get along and working together to sabotage the wedding, they start to catch feelings for each other. The trailer showed that the audience should expect witty bantering, romance, adult conversations, and character growth.

Ticket to Paradise was successful in bringing rom-coms back to life by bringing back 90s icons, Julia Roberts and George Clooney. By focusing on the relationship between divorced parents it grabbed the attention of an adult audience: restoring part of the audience that had been lost since the 2000s. The chemistry between Julia and George made the film successful and shows there is hope for the genre to make a comeback.