Movie Review: Ticket To Paradise

August 18, 2023

My husband and I really wanted to see this in theaters when it came out, but it just didn’t work out. Just the other night we saw it and it did not disappoint.

I will start out with the negatives – it did feel a little like I wanted a little more from Lily ( Kaitlyn Dever ) and a little more backstory to her, but the movie wasn’t really about her, it was really about her parents. Lily’s parents ( played by George Clooney and Julia Roberts ) divorced pretty early on in Lily’s childhood and it had not been a very amicable divorce at that. They bickered the whole of Lily’s childhood and never could spend much around each other without biting each others heads off.

The movie starts out with Lily graduating from law school with a job lined up at a fancy firm in Chicago. She is going to Bali with her friend before she begins work and ends up falling in love on the trip. She falls so hard that she ends up getting engaged and decides to abandon her life back in the States in order to live in Bali with the love of her life.

As you could expect, he parents are not too excited about the fact that their daughter met someone and decided that she wanted to risk everything she had been working for for years and years for this person she just met. They don’t trust that she has put enough thought into her future with this person and make a plan to derail the wedding plans.

Them teaming up together and working toward what they thought was best for their daughter actually rekindled the romance that they had once shared. It allowed them time to dig through the heartache that lead them to their split and all of the hurt after.

It felt along the vein of Mama Mia in that there was a youthful love story, but that was not the main storyline. The journey of discovery in the parents was really what the main story was about; their healing and understanding and considering things from another point of view.

I highly suggest this sweet movie. It is modern RomCom we all need.