Opinion The old trope at the center of the newest Julia Roberts and George Clooney rom-com Think HEAD TOPICS
Opinion The old trope at the center of the newest Julia Roberts and George Clooney rom-com
10/22/2022 11:01:00 PM The divorced couple who reconcile is an old Hollywood trope As in really old
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Noah Berlatsky: The movie 'Ticket to Paradise' highlights how Hollywood’s preferred love story has shifted. - NBCNewsTHINK The divorced couple who reconcile is an old Hollywood trope As in really old ByCentering on Julia Roberts and George Clooney, two great, aging stars of rom-coms past, “Ticket to Paradise” was always going to be a throwback. But in a fun twist, the movie’s two couples end up giving us a brief tour through the history of the entire genre, highlighting how Hollywood’s preferred love story has shifted as well. The divorced couple who reconcile is an old rom-com trope. As in, really old. It significantly predates Clooney classics like “Out of Sight”ClooneyThe Cottons’ relationship also recalls the bracingly cheerful cynicism of that same screwball era. Contemporary rom-coms tend to embrace destiny and love at first sight, or at least (as in “When Harry Met Sally”) love after a while, leading to the happily ever after. But “His Girl Friday” starts after the love has already worn off, and “The Awful Truth” gears up after multiple gratuitous betrayals and infidelities. The protagonists have had all the dew knocked out of their eyes. The path back to romance is more like a battle, where the combatants know each other’s weaknesses and aren’t afraid to exploit them. Read more:
NBC News » “Ticket to Paradise,” Reviewed: Let These Stick Figures Riff and Dance! Movie Review: Ticket to Paradise ‘Ticket to Paradise’ Doesn’t Deserve Clooney and Roberts ‘Ticket to Paradise’ review: George Clooney and Julia Roberts grin and bear it Pro-Trump group gathers intel for its war on voting machines
Calling themselves “nonpartisan,” right-wing activists surveyed election officials for information to fuel a lobbying campaign by election conspiracy theorists. Read more >> “Ticket to Paradise,” Reviewed: Let These Stick Figures Riff and Dance!“Ticket to Paradise,” starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts, depends on star power to fill out a simple framework of a story. The great rom coms died with Nora Ephron This looks dreadful Judging by the photo, Julia Roberts is no “stick figure”. Movie Review: Ticket to ParadiseMOVIE REVIEW: Clooney and Roberts join the year of the rom-com with a by-the-numbers effort. ‘Ticket to Paradise’ Doesn’t Deserve Clooney and Roberts'Without solid rom-com ground, 'Ticket to Paradise' rings hollow.' Sadly, the new Julia Roberts/George Clooney rom-com is a dud. Read beastobsessed's review of TickettoParadise: beastobsessed Duh ‘Ticket to Paradise’ review: George Clooney and Julia Roberts grin and bear it'Ticket to Paradise' reunites George Clooney and Julia Roberts, but fails to recapture the effortless magic of a great romantic comedy. Thank you now I have no need to see this movie Thank you now I have no need to see this movie Box Office: ‘Black Adam’ Heads for Solid $60M Opening While ‘Ticket to Paradise’ Travels in StyleIt's a starry weekend at the box office, where the two new nationwide movies feature Dwayne Johnson, Julia Roberts and George Clooney between them. Overrated junk movie ...only $450 million more to go to make a profit🤡. This is just another race swapped anti-white movie. Reward them if you choose, but I choose not too. I'm busy working on my all White, Asian, and Hispanic character race swap version of Black Panther. It's going to be AWESOME!!! BringBackZackSnyder RestoreTheSnyderVerse𓃵 Julia Roberts and George Clooney in "Ticket to Paradise.Save this story for later.remake? Did I forget your favorite? 2022 was laden with romantic comedies, including now Ticket to Paradise .Ticket to Paradise fails to be either romantic or comedic. " Vince Valitutti / Universal Oct. 22, 2022, 10:00 AM UTC By , cultural critic Centering on Julia Roberts and George Clooney, two great, aging stars of rom-coms past, “Ticket to Paradise” was always going to be a throwback. The rom-com genre is inherently plot-driven, whereas few viewers any longer doubt that romance itself is anything but character-driven. But in a fun twist, the movie’s two couples end up giving us a brief tour through the history of the entire genre, highlighting how Hollywood’s preferred love story has shifted as well. While there, Lily meets and falls in love with seaweed farmer, Gede (Bouttier). The movie’s two couples end up giving us a brief tour through the history of the entire genre, highlighting how Hollywood’s preferred love story has shifted as well. Today, the tightly formatted genre produces the stories that know too little: few viewers are likely to overlook the meshing of details, the shared passions and life goals, the mutual discoveries, the connections of experiences and world views, outlooks and ambitions, on which enduring relationships are built. Clooney and Roberts play David and Georgia Cotton, a long-divorced couple. Lily and Gede meet, he shows her his seaweed farm, and suddenly, they’re engaged. Their daughter, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), celebrates her college graduation by leaving with her roommate Wren (Billie Lourd) for a vacation on Bali. That’s a long way of saying that the stick figures set in motion in rom-coms get their simulation of amplitude from star power. They’ve been divorced for nearly two decades and basically loathe each other. Lily plans to just stay in Bali temporarily before returning to the states and law school. But instead she falls in love — at first sight, naturally — with seaweed fisherman and generally beautiful human Gede (Maxime Bouttier). “Ticket to Paradise,” starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts (such is their billing), depends on that power to fill out a simple framework of a story. David and Georgia stop bickering long enough to agree on one thing: They need to stop Lily from leaping into a marriage right out of college, as they did 25 years ago. Reunited and it feels so good? Yes and no. The divorced couple who reconcile is an old rom-com trope. The couple that they play is burdened with a personal history that the movie never develops, never even discloses; their action is focussed on a second couple—one involving their daughter—that gets even less character development. Georgia is an art dealer who gave up her entire life to be with David, an architect who promised to bring her a home full of life. As in, really old. It significantly predates Clooney classics like “Out of Sight” (1998) or Roberts’ “Pretty Woman” (1990). Georgia Cotton (Roberts), a high-powered gallery owner, and David Cotton (Clooney), a big-project architect, were married for five years, divorced two decades ago, and have lived apart ever since, in unquenched acrimony and mutual recrimination. No, because, again, there is nothing new here. The heyday of the divorce romance was some 60 years before those pictures, in the era of screwball comedies. Iconic examples include the Cary Grant and Irene Dunne vehicle “The Awful Truth” (1937) and Howard Hawks’ “His Girl Friday” (1940) with Grant and Rosalind Russell. (Even the former couple’s attendance at the ceremony leads to a public bout of competitive bickering. Clooney has often been compared to Grant , and director Ol Parker refers to these old-style rom-coms quite deliberately as he plays with retro rapid-fire dialogue in many of the Clooney-Roberts exchanges. The cast was fine with what they were given, and were all certainly very pretty to look at, as was Australia posing as Bali. They’re both worried she’s making the same mistake they did—getting married to someone too quickly, before you’ve seen them at their worst. (“Worst 19 years of my life. There, in a moment of panic during an open-sea swim, Lily cute-meets Gede (Maxime Bouttier), a young man from the island who works as a seaweed farmer, and it’s love at first sight.” “We were only married for five.” “I’m counting the recovery. When Lily tells her parents of this plan, they spring into action, flying to Bali ostensibly to attend the wedding but actually to put into motion a harebrained scheme to prevent it—to break the young couple up and get Lily home, to work, and to the life she’d otherwise leave behind. Ticket to Paradise did not, in fact, float my boat.” Rim shot.) The Cottons’ relationship also recalls the bracingly cheerful cynicism of that same screwball era. On the one hand, the backbiting is so easygoing and intimate that it sounds from the start like the banter of a longtime couple rather than the bile of a busted-up one; yet, on the other, there’s nothing in the movie to suggest why their breakup was so bitter, why the venom remains. Vince Valitutti Worst of all is Lily and Gede have no romantic chemistry. Contemporary rom-coms tend to embrace destiny and love at first sight, or at least (as in “When Harry Met Sally”) love after a while, leading to the happily ever after. But “His Girl Friday” starts after the love has already worn off, and “The Awful Truth” gears up after multiple gratuitous betrayals and infidelities. The two worldly protagonists have nothing to say, not to each other, not to others, not even to text or e-mail friends. The protagonists have had all the dew knocked out of their eyes. The path back to romance is more like a battle, where the combatants know each other’s weaknesses and aren’t afraid to exploit them. In the long-ago Hollywood that sputtered out around the time that the Cottons’ marriage did, in which character types took precedence over character, money may have been no subject. David and Georgia show up in Bali convinced that love is a sham. Not only does she have zero chemistry with her fiancé, but Lily also never proves to have much of a connection with her parents either. They don’t believe Lily’s idyllic tropical romance will work, just like their predecessors from the '30s and '40s wouldn’t have believed in that kind of love — at least, not on the first try. Not only do Georgia and David drop everything for their trip, which they stuff with unquestioned comforts and luxuries, but they appear to have conveyed that level of economic freedom—and the blithe confidence that goes with it—to Lily herself. Also like those skeptical and combative Hollywood stars of yesteryear, David and Georgia get to have a lot of fun with their lines. And they’re the ones who have to deal with dolphin and snake attacks, harking back to the leopard in “Bringing Up Baby. They’re the more interesting couple, and their apparent differences suggest an even more dramatic meshing of personalities, traits, and experiences.” (It’s a trope suggesting that nature itself is unexpectedly opposed to the project of reproduction.) Later-vintage rom-coms are mostly less focused on getting you to laugh out loud and more centered on emotional catharsis. The very essence of the plot is the elder Cottons’ instrumentalizing of Lily and dismissal of Gede—the parents treating the young couple as the objects of their own designs, the instruments of their own will. Any delights to be had only appear in the most random corners of the movie. An especially important trope in the modern rom-com is the public declaration. In these scenes, the central couple expresses their love for one another in a grand gesture before a big audience — an audience that stands in for, and implicitly includes, the movie viewers themselves. Parker’s directorial purview is as narrow and cramped as the script. “Love Actually” (2003) includes a number of iconic examples. The trope is elaborated on almost to the point of self-parody in this year’s “Marry Me,” in which Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson exchange vows in front of a stadium full of people. The one noteworthy scene of flashy and invigorating physical action—it’s a dance to accompany a round of beer pong—is filmed so confiningly and edited so tightly as to resemble a thirty-second Viagra commercial. And, yes, there’s a parallel moment in “Ticket to Paradise” (though with an interesting tweak). Still, when. These audience participation set pieces frame rom-coms as ritual spaces for the worship of love. Only Gede’s father, Wayan (Agung Pindha), displays a genuine sense of humor; the sole touch of charm is a moment in which Gede shows that he has inherited it. They celebrate lifelong commitment, just as those older screwball comedies mocked such fidelity with a wink and a quip. It’s not spoiling anything to say that in this film, released in 2022 and not in 1940, the more hopeful, uncomplicated view of romance (mostly) wins out over the crotchety older one. But the underlying innovation is perhaps the more important one: the structuring of his films on the missing, but implied, threshing- and fleshing-out of relationships through emotionally bruising conversations. The world-weary Georgia and David cast a jaundiced eye on even the most beautiful Bali sunset. But Lily and Gede, as Hollywood-beautiful as they are, can’t really compete. (“Ticket to Paradise” doesn’t even imply a Cassavetes minute. Even young gorgeous individuals in a tropical paradise aren’t as effortlessly, gracefully charming as George Clooney and Julia Roberts batting putdowns back and forth. That’s ultimately also the biggest similarity between the two generations of rom-com love. In “Ticket to Paradise,” Parker sticks with antiquated romantic-comedy archetypes; in the process, he overlooks and effaces the two engaging couples at the center of the action. Relationships in real life can be tedious and mundane, sometimes tragic, and rarely filled with meet cutes, epiphanies or tightly scripted dialogue. Whether knowing and fast-paced or pausing in rapt contemplation, the rom-com gives love a glamour, a structure, a wonder and an intelligence that sweeps you off your feet. New Yorker Favorites. The new love and the old anti-love seem to be at odds. But really they’re joined by a singular, timeless fantasy that’s bigger than life. And who better to fulfill that fantasy than George and Julia. Noah Berlatsky .