The premise of ‘Journey to Paradise’ is “We have brought Julia Roberts and George Clooney together again”, and in a world of cinema that was fully recovered from Covid I wouldn’t need more to be a box office breaker (forgettable, but box office breaker after all). In truth, the film lacks hook in the dialogues, flavor in the direction and humor that is not directly insulting towards the viewer, and it has plenty of sugar and predictability. And you know what? It doesn’t matter, because she makes up for everything else with the charisma of her main character, who only needs to smile to fall at her feet. Grab your plane ticket, because we’re going to a Balinese wedding.
Back in the 90s I was in a very famous TV show
If someone told me that ‘Journey to Paradise’ is actually a film that was stuck inside a drawer in 1998 and it has been restored to be able to see it now, I could believe it without many qualms: the film has that naive and adorable tone of the romantic cinema of the time but a flat personality in direction and script. It seems, literally, something out of its time, but that in its day, beyond the leading couple, it would not have been memorable either.
And that the film, in its early stages, knows exactly where to press. George Clooney and Julia Roberts are divorced, hate each other and continually throw shit at each other: the screwball comedy is fast, funny and reminiscent of a romantic cinema that was left behind. But it doesn’t last long: toxicity turns into love and from the flames at the beginning of the footage there are hardly any embers left at the end, culminating in an embarrassing and televised shot that reminiscent of the worst idioms of the ninetiesthat decade that you think you long for until you start watching the cinema of the time.
In his nineties intention, he even brings to the table a tradition that many of us thought had been forgotten and buried: the outtakes during the credits. It’s not a complaint at all (they were replaced by the extras on the DVDs), but it shows that they had a much better time making it than we did watching it: I wish the whole film was non-stop jamming by George Clooney and Julia Roberts without that the plot mattered in the least. And it shows that the director, Ol Parker, comes from ‘Mamma mia! Over and over again’ and he is an expert in getting minutes out of absolutely nothing.
In his head it was spectacular
‘Journey to Paradise’ is a movie made in 2022 for an audience that no longer exists with a language and an old-fashioned argument that is not able to adjust the nostalgia correctly. I tell you: Lily, the daughter of Clooney and Roberts (her characters have names, but we all know who they really play), goes on a post-graduation trip to Bali, meets a boy and wants to marry him. Her parents, who hate each other, make a pact to boycott the marriage. It sounds a bit stale, like a Spanish movie starring Leo Harlembut actually more than mothballs, what it smells like is absurd predictability.
If you’re expecting big twists, risque jokes, surprises, or just a plot you haven’t seen eight hundred million times, this isn’t your movie. ‘Journey to Paradise’ tries to repeat the success of the sequel to ‘Mamma Mia!’ using the same weapons: dreamy places, mature couples of mythical actors, very beautiful unknown young couples, simple script and balance humor. But of course, where that was an Abba musical that at least got carried away in the choreography, this is more similar to Jose Luis Moreno’s Matrimoniadaswith Julia Roberts as Pepa and George Clooney as Avelino.
Jokes like “Not all the booze in the world would make me sleep with you again!” they spice up a film aimed at a very specific audience that is currently quite far from theaters. Of course, don’t look at generation z, which he draws just as Hollywood has been portraying generic young people for decades: very intelligent, capable of giving lessons to their parents and without anything that defines them or unites them with reality in the slightest. Neither TikTok, nor social networks, nor WhatsApp: the movie knows perfectly well that he plays in the senior leagues.
Holidays in Bali passed by water
The film bases its decisions and its plot on a phrase that Roberts’ character constantly repeats: “Why put off the good stuff for later?”. With that phrase from a self-help book (or mortgage advertisement) as its flag, ‘Journey to Paradise’ completely waters down any hint of reality that it may have in its Balinese portrait (and more specifically, of traditional weddings there). Of course, we must be fair: between jokes based on speaking in a different language and small glimpses of very light hooliganism (Lily’s friend packs condoms in the suitcase! What a catch!), the 104 minutes pass in a sigh.
‘Journey to paradise’, already from its own title, couldn’t be more generic. You know everything that is going to come, the faces that the actors are going to make, their reaction to any break in the road. And yet, there is something very nice about this sleepy comfort. For many effects that can be attributed to the film, it does not want to deceive anyone at any time. It is a romantic comedy between a mythical couple of actors who it is as bland as it is tranquilizing.
East It is a type of cinema that is no longer made, for a target that no longer goes to theaters. And the thing is, although I can’t say that ‘Journey to Paradise’ has been the movie of my life or that I’ve laughed my ass off, it’s a necessary kind of cinema. You can put all the drawbacks in the world, yes, but it produces the same effect as those movies you’ve seen two hundred times and still see: it is pure visual dopamine that has no other intention than to take you back to the past, when this type of cinema still filled multiplexes. It is unsuccessful, yes, but a laudable endeavor, to say the least.