‘Journey to Paradise’: the romantic comedy that baby boomers and Generation X deserved

There’s an undeniable truth about romantic comedies (and it’s not that they’re for women): the best were made in the 90s, the golden decade of this genre. While the 80s also have their hits (“When Harry Met Sally”) and the 2000s sneak into all the unforgettable lists (see “Love Actually” or “Bridget Jones’s Diary”), they are “Pretty Woman “(1990),” Four Weddings and a Funeral “(1994), ‘While You were Sleeping’ (1995), ‘Something to Remember’ (1993), ‘You’ve Got Email’ (1998), ‘Notting Hill’ ( 1999), ‘My best friend’s wedding’ (1997), ’10 reason to odi you ‘(1999) or’ Runaway Bride ‘(1999) are the real jewels in the crown.

So, and even though they are movies that television broadcasts on a loop and some of them will never go out of style, for baby boomers and generation X they were their window to romantic love, an annual bombardment of kitschy and unrealistic high expectations that feminism began to question with increasing force in the 21st century. The new generations have new approaches that rethink love and adapt them to our times, titles like “Palm Springs”, “The good side of things”, “And suddenly you”, “Crazy Rich Asians” or “To all the boys I fell in love with ‘, but what about those who have seen themselves represented in Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks? who have disappeared, because no one falls in love after 40 and they must also hear that they have learned to love badly. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, George Clooney said he no longer acted in movies because he was too old: “Nobody wants to see me kiss the girl anymore”I think, but ‘Journey to Paradise’ arrives in theaters to prove him wrong and something else: to give those generations the romantic comedy they still deserve.

In “Journey to Paradise”, Julia Roberts and George Clooney play a divorced couple who can’t stand each other. They went out together in college and right at graduation, when their paths would take them to separate cities, in a great romantic gesture David proposed to Georgia in front of the whole audience, they got married, she overshadowed her career burner, they had a baby and 5 years later they couldn’t even see each other anymore. They experienced reality check after the and ate the partridges and now their daughter is just days away from making the same mistake they did: marrying young, millions of miles from home and just out of law school. Finally, David and Georgia have something in common again and team up to prevent marriage in a succession of misunderstandings, setbacks and accidents. all in the most beautiful landscapes on Earth. We already know that the touch makes love, the plot is not new, the approach is.

To begin with, because its protagonists are neither teenagers nor twenty-year-olds (remember that if you’re single at 30, you failed …), they are two Hollywood greats who are over 50 and their stories still matter. Then, because the whole film questions one of the great lies that literature, cinema or music have sold us: that love can do anything. The film tells us over and over again that, in addition to loving each other, 3 conditions must be met: that it is at the right time, in the right place and in the right circumstances. Also, ‘Journey to Paradise’ enjoys overturning other such clichés, such as age difference. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere are 18 years apart and have fallen in love in two films: Jack Nicholson is 26 years older than Helen Hunt and 35 than Amanda Peet and has appeared on screen with both; and you already know that the older Tom Cruise, the younger his imaginary friends are. Now it’s her, Roberts, who is dating Paul (Lucas Bravo), an airplane pilot about 20 years younger and madly in love with her. And he’s part of the joke, not the logic of an equal relationship.

Fascinating in its simplicity

But enough with the context and let’s get to the heart. On and off screen (don’t miss the credits) Roberts and Clooney exude insane chemistry. They had a lot of fun shooting it and it shows, and they look offensively beautiful too. ‘Journey to Paradise’ retraces the structures of the crazy comedy always with two characters destined to be together, who can’t stand it and who have 100 minutes to fall in love. A formula that you already know and in which the unpredictable is evident by its absence, yet it is fascinating in its simplicity, just what you’d expect from an old school romantic comedy with a twist. It is designed to entertain you with a smile almost as big as Roberts’, to excite you a little and maybe identify yourself a little more. Nothing more, but sometimes that’s enough. You can stand anything, even the banal speech of Carpe Diemfor that touching and sickening ending that you know is coming and it’s like a drug that you spend the whole movie waiting.

But let’s not exaggerate, not everything would be fine, or at least not everything is fine. Except Billie Lourd, who can’t help but be a comic hurricane like her mother (Carrie Fisher), and Bravo the thief of scenes, the other secondary ones are banal and wasted. Neither Kaitlyn Dever, who has already shown her potential in “Super Nerds”, “Believe Me” and “Dopesick: An Addiction Story”, nor the bland of Maxime Bouttier, have a single scene to remember. And that they are the ones who will ruin the marriage.

Additionally, Ol Parker’s script and direction (“Mamma Mia! Again and Again”) They could have benefited from a little more naughty milk and mischief, but being a familiar product to all audiences, the most “grown-up” scene is a dolphin attack on Clooney’s genitals. And this happens off camera. Another problem that he has not been able to solve by following the recipe too closely is the easy resource of misunderstandings in bed. The sequence of intoxication and competition of beer pong between parents and children is one of the funniest moments with the two protagonists dancing out of phase, but it is followed by the easy resource of having spent the night together with such a hangover that you can’t remember if something sexual has happened between them. Obviously they wake up dressed from head to toe.

As much as we have accused romantic comedies of romanticizing jealousy and big numbers as signs of true love, mistaking discord for passion, normalizing unequal relationships, or promoting the idea that a makeover is all you need to find your soul. twin, These are the films that allow us to believe in the happy ending, because they always end at the best time, with the hope that all good things are yet to come. The Beatles had already clear: “All You Need Is Love”, but let’s love each other better, please.

Note: 7

The best: The reinterpretation of romantic love.

Worse: Secondaries are completely wasted.