There is no doubt that the last elections were fateful, but in response to them many said “as dramatic as the results are – the sun will continue to shine tomorrow too”. continue to act and continue to screen romantic comedies, and Julia Roberts and George Clooney continue to make films together.
“Ticket to Heaven” is the fifth collaboration of the two, and the first since “Money Monster” six years ago. Roberts and Clooney are two of the only movie stars left today, so it’s no wonder that this summit has become one of the only blockbusters of recent times. This time they play a divorced couple, whose life together has left behind a lot of sediments and also one common daughter, who is played by Caitlin Dewar, one of the most prominent young actresses in Hollywood at the moment. With the encouragement of her parents, she graduates law school with honors. Then she goes to Bali for a short vacation to celebrate her degree.
So far, everything is going as planned, except that the future lawyer meets a local guy, and decides to stay put, marry him and live a balanced and spiritual life with him, away from the material pressures of the legal world. The parents of course oppose this, and are forced to overcome the precipitation, join forces and travel together to the pastoral island to prevent the wedding.
On the box office success side, “Ticket to Heaven” has been met with fatal reviews – quite expectedly it must be said. However, and this is said by someone who does not tolerate Clooney and does not admire Roberts, it is quite fun to watch. Divor is charming and so are the other young actors, including Luca Bravo The Frenchman, who broke out in “Emily in Paris” and here plays the new lover of the divorced mother; the landscapes are amazing, even though due to the restrictions of the Corona virus the film was actually shot in Australia; and the plot manages to hold the attention of the audience: nowadays it is not obvious to meet a product in the cinema where it is clear who is against who .
It is easy to dismiss “Ticket to Heaven” as nothing more than a light and silly romantic comedy, but there is more to it than that. It talks about mistakes that people make in their youth and carry them years later, and it asks a difficult question: do parents, in this film and in general, act out of concern for the good Their children, or out of selfish considerations? There is something sad about this hit, perhaps also because Roberts and Clooney aren’t getting any younger, and it’s hard to believe that they have many more romantic comedies in the pipeline. Someday, the sun will continue to shine without them.
Besides “Ticket to Heaven”, another romantic comedy, “There are no such men” came out recently. But unlike Roberts and Clooney’s blockbuster, this film was not so successful, although it is sweet, moving, funny, brilliant, sometimes even genius, and above all – delightful. The reason for its failure is quite clear: it presents a love story between men, and it turns out that even nowadays, the audience prefers to see stories about men and women. This commercial failure provides an important reminder: it is easy to blame everything on “religious Zionism”, but even among the “liberal” crowd there is homophobia.
The film was directed by the wonderful Nicholas Stoller, one of the most underrated directors in Hollywood, who signed such gems as “Forget Sarah Marshall” (“Take it like a man”), the two episodes of the masterful “Neighbors” series and more. However, the living spirit behind it is Billy Eichner, who wrote the script and also stars as a Jewish and gay New York comedian, who hosts a popular podcast and is working to establish the first museum in the city dedicated to the history of the LGBTQ+ community. He is preoccupied with two questions. One, collectively: what is the right way to present the history of this community The second, private, and related to his personal life: will he ever find love and be able to commit to a relationship? This is of course only a short and superficial summary, because this is a multi-layered work that has many more issues and difficulties.
In one of the climaxes of the film, the hero meets the parents of his new partner for the first time (the mother, by the way, is played by Amanda Beers, who broke out as Mercy in the series “Married Plus” in the 90s, did not appear in this significant film for more than half a year, and herself came out of the closet in 1993). They are aware of their son’s sexual identity and accept it, but beyond his private situation, they have no interest in the collective struggle of the LGBTQ+ community. The mother, for example, is a teacher who declares that she will not talk in class about the history of this community.
At the request of his partner, the hero of the film initially tries to maintain peace at home, and not to confront the conservative parents, but in the end chooses to externalize his militant nature, even if this causes a quarrel. Such is also the whole of “There Are No Such Men”, which is not satisfied with the love story between its protagonists but spreads a wider fan, is interested in the entire community no less than in the two main characters, deals with questions of identity, image, representation and education and is not afraid to challenge the status quo.
There is a price for this, of course, and this time in the most literal sense of the word: the price was the box office failure of “There Are No Such Men”, because the audience preferred the hit with Roberts and Clooney over it. When they say that the sun will rise again tomorrow, they mean, among other things, that it will rise in the same way it did Yesterday, and indeed, the last month proved that the nature of the romantic comedies that crush box office hasn’t really changed between the 1930s and the present day.