Streaming Spotlight by Cindy Summers
Ticket to Paradise – Peacock Streaming
Breeze rating from 1 to 4 palm trees, 4 being best.
In Ticket to Paradise, David (George Clooney) and Georgia (Sandra Bullock) Cotton are the proud parents of their daughter and recent law school graduate Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), however there’s no love between them having divorced 20 years earlier and have difficultly being civil whenever around each other. Lily had decided to take a trip to Bali with her best friend Wren (Billie Lourd), who also just graduated, to take a break before beginning a new life and job at a law firm, though had no idea that her ticket to paradise was actually a ticket to a totally new path in life.
Lily and Wren decided to take a snorkeling excursion, but accidentally swam away from the group and were left behind in the ocean a few miles from shore. Luckily a young Balinese seaweed farmer named Gede (Maxime Bouttier) came upon them with his boat and brought them back to shore. Though having just met, it was clear to see that Lily and Gede had an immediate attraction to each other and over the next few weeks spent all their time together with Wren experiencing Balinese life and culture.
After only a month Gede and Lily decided they wanted to get married, and Lily emailed the good news and invitation to her parents, who both felt she was throwing her life away and determined to go to Bali to convince her to change her mind. David and Georgia were coincidentally seated next to each other on the plane, where they first began bickering but decided they needed to call a truce and work together to stop Lily from getting married.
Upon arriving on the island, they meet Lily’s finance Gede, a caring, compassionate seaweed farmer managing his family farm that has been in operation for generations and successful enough to have contracts with large companies like Whole Foods. Though they liked Gede, David and Georgia remained committed to their goal. They came up with a plan to steal the wedding rings and compromise local traditions that would cause Lily and Gede to have to call off their wedding, which was scheduled to happen in four days.
Upon discovering the rings were missing, Gede decided to ignore any thinking that it was a sign and replaced the rings to have them for their ceremony. Gede had suspicions that David and Georgia were behind the missing rings, but didn’t tell Lily. They both found out it was true when all four took a boat trip to a nearby island where Lily found the rings in Georgia’s bag. David acted as if he knew nothing about it and left Georgia alone to have the blame, but Lily told them both they either needed to support her decision to marry Gede or go home.
Realizing they may be on the verge of losing their relationship with their daughter, David and Georgia decided to do a full 180 and offer their complete support. The wedding was set for the following day and planned in accordance with traditional Balinese customs. The question that remained was could David and Georgia see past their own past relationship issues to support the happiness of their daughter, and could such togetherness even spark the love they knew in their past together.
Ticket to Paradise is an entertaining comedic escape, with George and Julia perfectly cast to charge it with wit, charm and charisma that has viewers routing for them from the start.
Rated: PG-13
Runtime 1h 44m
