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‘Leave the World Behind’ Is the Ultimate Apocalypse-Karen Movie

By David Fear

It starts not with a bang, but a lack of Wi-Fi. The internet goes down, which means no social media, no email, no communications with the outside world, and — because this is a Netflix movie about worst-case scenarios — no streaming. Then satellites are knocked out, which kills any and all navigation systems reliant upon orbiting technology in the U.S. Because animal migration patterns have been disrupted, you may see more deer than usual popping up in your front yard. Keep an eye out for flamingos in your pool, too. Propaganda pamphlets start dropping from the sky. And finally, a loud, piercing noise, so sonically powerful as to be debilitating. After that, chaos reigns. No one needs to push America off a cliff. Just nudge folks in the direction toward the cliff, and we’ll do the rest on our own.

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Her college-professor husband, Clay ( Ethan Hawke , playing off his IRL befuddled hipster-dad persona nicely), shrugs, loads up the car, and gets behind the wheel. Their son, Archie (Charlie Evans), hopes he can meet up with a potential hookup in nearby Sag Harbor. Their daughter, Rose (Farrah Mackenzie), is obsessed with Friends . When her online connection goes out right as she’s about to check out the series finale, she flips out. You’d have thought the world was ending. That’s still a few days away. In the meantime, the family is going to enjoy their home away from home. Then an oil tanker inexplicably grounds itself on the very beachfront where the Sandfords are relaxing. The family’s reaction runs from worried to yeah, whatever. Apocalypse Karen, however, is downright angry. This is the kind of shit that ruins much-earned vacations!

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All these mysterious phenomena and minor inconveniences have been warmups for the real test, however. After the kids have gone to bed, there’s a knock at the door. Amanda and Clay find a man in a tuxedo and a young woman on the porch. His name is George “G.H.” Scott ( Mahershala Ali ), and he’s the owner of the rental. The twentysomething standing next to him is his daughter, Ruth ( Industry ‘s Myha’la ). They’re so sorry to bother them, but you see, there’s been a massive blackout in New York City. They’d been at the symphony in the Bronx — George is on the board — and given how things tend to get a little crazy when the power goes out in the city, they decided to come here until things calm down. They’ll sleep in the basement, and even refund half of the Sandfords’ money.

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Which is that: The real weapon being used here isn’t a cyberattack, a smart bomb, or sabotage. It’s homegrown suspicion. At one point, Ali — who, we should point out, lifts up every single scene he’s in, and every partner he shares the screen with — talks about his day job as a money manager and market analyst, and a client who’s in the defense industry. The fear this government bigwig harbored was that, given a few well-executed disasters, we’d turn on each other naturally. That he’s relaying this idea in front of a blue-collar neighbor played by a menacing Kevin Bacon brandishing a shotgun only underlines the civil-war notion. (We applaud the filmmakers’ restraint in not putting Bacon’s survivalist in a MAGA cap.) The seeds of our destruction have already been planted by us; they simply need a little water and and sunlight to grow. And the more that Leave the World Behind pokes at that notion, the more you fear that this isn’t a thriller. It could be a documentary with movie stars.

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Movie Review: ‘Leave the World Behind’ is a terrific blend of thriller, disaster and satire

This image released by Netflix shows Mahershela Ali from left, Myha’la Herrold, Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (JoJo Whilden/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Ethan Hawke, from left, Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Myha’la Herrold, from left, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Mahershala Ali, left, and Julia Roberts in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Myha’la Herrold as Ruth and Mahershala Ali in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Julia Roberts in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Julia Roberts, from left, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la Herrold, and Mahershala Ali in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Charlie Evans, left, and Farrah Mackenzie in a scene from “Leave the World Behind.” (Netflix via AP)

From left, Kevin Bacon, Sam Esmail, Ethan Hawke, Julia Roberts, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans, Mahershala Ali and Myha’la Herrold pose together at the premiere of Netflix’s “Leave the World Behind” at the Plaza Hotel on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Myha’la Herrold, left, Ethan Hawke, center, and Julia Roberts attend the premiere of Netflix’s “Leave the World Behind” at the Plaza Hotel on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

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Imagine that it’s close to midnight and there’s a knock at the door of your luxurious weekend rental home. A man is standing there, calmly apologizing. He says it’s his home and that he and his daughter need your help. He’s also dressed immaculately in a tux.

What would you do?

Did the tux make a difference? Would the man’s race?

That early scene is when Netflix’s “Leave the World Behind” really kicks into gear and never slackens as this terrific, apocalyptic, psychological thriller races to its conclusion, exploring race, affluence and responsibility along the way.

The luxurious home becomes a castle of sorts as the outside world crumbles. The man who says he’s the owner tries to explain why he’s turned up. “Under the circumstances, we thought you’d understand,” he says. But understanding is in short supply here.

This image released by Netflix shows Myha'la Herrold as Ruth and Mahershala Ali in a scene from "Leave the World Behind." (Netflix via AP)

Adapted from Rumaan Alam’s acclaimed novel, the movie is set against an end-of-days disaster in which technology — Wi-Fi, TV, phones, internet — has gone silent due to a cyberattack and there’s been a massive blackout.

Well-to-do Amanda (a tart Julia Roberts) and her Atlantic magazine-quoting husband Clay (a hangdog Ethan Hawke) must work with the even-more-well-off G.H. (a calmly sophisticated Mahershala Ali) and his savvy daughter Ruth, (a superb Myha’la). The racial divide easily swamps their joint class affiliation.

This image released by Netflix shows Adria Arjona, left, and Glen Powell in a scene from "Hit Man." (Netflix via AP)

Also along for the disaster are Amanda and Clay’s children, a “Friends”-obsessed daughter (a soulful Farrah Mackenzie, who even wears her hair in a “Rachel” 'do) and her older, slightly bratty 16-year-old brother (a brooding Charlie Evans).

It’s a story brilliantly adapted and directed by Sam Esmail, showrunner of “Mr. Robot,” who has made “Leave the World Behind” into a homage of Alfred Hitchcock, complete with the image of a man trying to outrun a crashing plane and using the master’s discordant loud music. Esmail, who manages to make a group of deer appear sinister, even makes a Hitchcockian cameo as a corpse on a beach.

The director paces the deepening dread flawlessly and there are visual delights throughout, like when the family starts off on their adventure with their car exiting at “Point Comfort.” The camera often swirls and soars through glass cracks or holes in roofs like an uneasy bird, or parks itself at strange angles.

This image released by Netflix shows Julia Roberts, from left, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la Herrold, and Mahershala Ali in a scene from "Leave the World Behind." (Netflix via AP)

A scene from “Leave the World Behind” (Netflix via AP)

The mysterious catastrophe — ships beach themselves, driverless cars crash like lemmings — sloughs away any pretense at civility, leaving the adults and children to turn on each other. Amanda, in particular, reveals a dark side and her husband — before the disaster, a can’t-we-all-get-along bro — abandons a hysterical survivor by the side of the road. Community is shattered, guns come out and protect-at-all-costs is the motto of the day.

The acting is first rate and it needs to be — this is a drama of manners and secrets, and each sigh or glance reveals so much. We haven’t seen a nasty Roberts character in a while and Ali balances sophistication and slyness artfully. Together, they have some of the film’s best scenes.

But a warning of sorts: It’s best to click play on your remote knowing that the movie is more a satire than a true action-survival movie — the open-ended ending may divide viewers. Click anyway because the journey never drags. And don’t be surprised if there’s a jump in sales of survival tools this holiday season.

“Leave the World Behind,” a Netflix release that starts streaming Friday, is rated R for “some sexual content, brief bloody images, language and drug use.” Running time: 141 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://www.netflix.com/title/81314956

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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‘Leave the World Behind’ Ending Explained: Author Rumaan Alam on the Significance of ‘Friends’ and the Accuracy of That Final Theory

By Caroline Brew

Caroline Brew

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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers for “ Leave the World Behind ,” now streaming on Netflix.

“There was one ending that was really inevitable,” says Rumaan Alam, whose novel “Leave the World Behind” was the source material for Netflix’s latest apocalyptic thriller. “The key thing to look at … is that the book ends with a question mark.”

Sam Esmail’s sci-fi feature adaptation makes a few diversions from the book, particularly in regards to the ending. But according to Alam, who also serves as an executive producer on the film, these changes were “emotionally faithful to the book.”

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In an attempt to help Archie, G.H. and Danny drive out to meet conspiracy theorist Danny (Kevin Bacon). While Danny ultimately agrees to help them out, a tense standoff leads G.H. to the conclusion that these events could be the result of a military campaign intended to destabilize a nation by forcing people to turn against each other. To survive, he decides that both families need to camp out in the bunker in his neighbor’s house.

Alam sat down with Variety to discuss the power of uncertainty, the accuracy of G.H.’s explanation and the reason for not offering a definitive conclusion for the characters.

Could you talk a bit about the deviations the film makes from the book, particularly with that “Friends” ending?

To end with the particular jolt of humor that [Sam] does is so satisfying and so rewarding. It’s sort of self-reflective because he’s a filmmaker. He’s also worked in television, and he’s sort of asserting something about the power of that medium, and its hold over this one character. I say it’s funny, but I don’t think it’s a joke. I don’t think it’s a joke on Rose. I don’t think it’s a joke on the audience. I don’t think it’s a joke on “Friends.” It’s a reminder that art is kind of a salve. The theatrical experience of watching this movie is so powerful because I’ve had the chance to see audiences respond to the ending three times now, and nobody really knows what to make of it. They’re like, is this funny? Is this scary? Is it really over? And I love that so much.

In the book, it seems like it’s more implied that the families reunite, with Rose planning to return to the house with supplies. But in the movie, it’s unclear. Are they going to find Rose? Is she going to stay down there watching “Friends” forever? Are they going to reunite?

In the film, they set that timer, and so there’s a literal ticking clock, and we hear the timer alarm go off. That’s the last moment we’re with Ruth and Amanda. And the last thing that G.H. has said is we’ve got to go to that bunker. You as a viewer may say, “Oh, they’re not going to make it.” But I have this vision of G.H. as so competent, and I feel like he’s solved every problem. But I don’t know what’s going to happen to Archie. The truth is that I don’t know. This is something I’ve heard Sam say a lot, that he also doesn’t know. But this is open enough that it becomes something that is possessed by its audience. I’m not withholding a definitive answer because I’m not in possession of that.

In the film, G.H. gives a pretty detailed explanation for what he thinks is happening. When you were writing the book, did you have his idea in mind?

I didn’t, but Mahershala Ali is such a good actor you sort of believe it. That was such a fundamental part of the writing process for me, is that I also don’t know. My first editor on this book said to me, “I understand that it’s imperative that you dance around what’s really happening.” And then she mentioned aliens, and I was like, “Aliens? Really, that’s where your head went?” But I also find that so pleasurable because I don’t get to control what people are thinking, and readers come to something with their own frame of reference.

G.H.’s monologue gives viewers a lot more of an explanation than what I expected.

In that scene in the car with Clay where G.H. shows he is genuinely scared for the first time, do you think the gravity of the situation only really clicked for him in that moment, or was he scared the whole time?

He’s describing this scenario of attack, which will induce uncertainty in the population. In a way, what he’s afraid of is exactly what he’s experiencing. It’s just uncertainty. You as the viewer have to fill in the blanks of what that uncertainty looks like, whether it’s a cyber attack, whether it’s an act of war, whether it’s environmental disaster, whether it’s just a collapse of civic order. That’s what’s so scary about it is that you just don’t know.

Why was it important to not give the audience the closure at the end of seeing the families reunited in the bunker?

Wouldn’t that be so dissatisfying? It’s a film that respects you as a viewer enough to not provide that. In that final scene between Julia and Myha’la, they don’t embrace. Even prior to that, when they’re in that little shed and come to a détente, Ruth acknowledges that there’s some truth to the things that Amanda has said, that they’re in agreement about something, but it doesn’t end with a hug. It’s not that kind of story. I have no problem with like a big disaster movie that saves the six or eight principals and reunites them in the aftermath of a disaster and allows you to be like, “Well, everything’s gonna be okay.” I just don’t think this is that kind of film.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Leave the World Behind review: Julia Roberts embraces her dark side in this paranoid, cynical Netflix thriller

The obamas are listed as producers here – but you do have to wonder what they think of this film’s exploration of america’s fundamental weaknesses, article bookmarked.

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Mr Robot creator Sam Esmail’s apocalyptic thriller Leave the World Behind kicks off with a slow zoom-in on Julia Roberts, as she sneers the words, “I f***ing hate people”. America’s sweetheart has sprinted over to the dark side, and it’s a thrill to see what she does with it. An adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel , this is unsubtle but audacious in its speculation on how a cyberattack might roll out in America – which explains the executive producer credits for Barack and Michelle Obama , who can neatly file this next to the string of educational works about civil liberties they’ve already collaborated on with Netflix.

But you do have to wonder what the Obamas think of the dark, highly paranoid cynicism of Esmail’s film, which feels more than anything like a portrait of America’s fundamental weaknesses. Here’s an empire so used to meddling in other people’s business that it’s seemingly unaware that the city behind the drawbridge would crumble with even the faintest whisper of disarray. It’s no coincidence that we’re first introduced to Amanda (Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke), a couple of such bubble-wrapped privilege that they’re able to take themselves and their two kids, Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans), on a spontaneous weekend getaway to a rented house on Long Island, New York.

That night, and only after watching an oil tanker run aground at the public beach, the family receive unexpected visitors. A man in a tux, GH Scott (Mahershala Ali), arrives with his daughter, Ruth (Myha’la). A blackout has hit the city, so they’ve retreated to a safe space – this house, he says, is his house. It causes an immediate tension that changes shape over the film’s runtime, but never really dissipates. Esmail’s script doesn’t necessarily centre race, but it’s also keenly aware that white supremacy doesn’t just charitably step aside at the first sign of crisis – in, fact, it’s usually quite the opposite. When Amanda asks GH, “this is your house?”, the “your” is venomous.

Leave the World Behind is, in part, a four-vehicle pileup of personalities: Hawke plays the kind of genial, harmless intellectual he’s naturally aged into, though the film doesn’t let him off scot-free. Ali gives us the control freak with perfect composure, who doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge he’s gained. Myha’la, a knockout in TV’s Industry , captures the frustration of a generation who can see what’s happening but aren’t empowered to vocalise it.

Esmail goes big and bold with his Hitchcock allusions and showy camera work, not unlike M Night Shyamalan. At times, he’s a little on the nose, also not unlike M Night Shyamalan. It suits his vision, which is by no means another “eat the rich” story but does watch these events unfold with a sense of wry hubris – down to the brand of car involved in the film’s scariest, most well-choreographed scene. Yet nothing quite shows Esmail’s hand more than Rose’s chemical-like reliance on Friends , a show which Ruth describes as “nostalgic for a time that never existed”. Yes, it’s ironic that the series is currently available on Netflix – but that’s exactly the kind of thoroughly modern hypocrisy Leave the World Behind revels in.

Dir: Sam Esmail. Starring: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la, Kevin Bacon. PG, 141 minutes.

‘Leave the World Behind’ is streaming on Netflix from 8 December

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Ticket to Paradise

A divorced couple teams up and travels to Bali to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they think they made 25 years ago. A divorced couple teams up and travels to Bali to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they think they made 25 years ago. A divorced couple teams up and travels to Bali to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they think they made 25 years ago.

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Goofs When Georgia and David are dropping Lily and Wren off at the airport that is presumably in the United States, a sign references "prams" and "trolleys." In an American airport, it should read "strollers" and "carts."

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Leave the World Behind Makes Mincemeat of the Apocalypse

We’ve always lived in the shadow of apocalypse — any given human at any given point in time will perceive their present as the end of history — but we’ve rarely lived through such a boom time for apocalyptic cultural products as we do right now. Published in the particularly cataclysmic year of 2020, Rumaan Alam’s novel Leave the World Behind offered a tense psychological drama about two New York families forced together in a remote rural vacation home right as a vague, humanity-threatening catastrophe appeared to be unfolding. Despite its premise, the book wasn’t really a science-fiction thriller; its perspective remained ground level, its true apocalypse emotional. But the terrifying glimpses of what was happening in the world outside also lent it a cosmic urgency.

Movies adapted from books have absolutely zero obligation to remain faithful to their source material. (For a masterclass in tossing out everything but title and setting, check out Jonathan Glazer’s upcoming The Zone of Interest , which has almost nothing to do with the Martin Amis novel it’s based on.) It can, however, get a little irritating for those familiar with the original if every change made for the adaptation happens to be for the worse.

Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind takes the characters and incidents of Alam’s novel and situates them inside a more pronounced, though not particularly convincing, apocalyptic thriller. Amanda (Julia Roberts) and Clay (Ethan Hawke) are a well-to-do Brooklyn couple who’ve rented a vacation house in a rural enclave outside of New York City with their two teenage kids. Not long after they arrive, however, certain unnerving incidents begin to occur, most notably a massive tanker running aground on a crowded beach. One night, a man in a black tie, George (Mahershala Ali), and his daughter, Ruth (Myha’la Herrold), arrive and ask to be let in. They are, it turns out, the owners of the property and have driven all the way out here after the city was plunged into a blackout. The casual, go-along-to-get-along Clay is happy to let them in, but the anxious, vaguely Karen-y Amanda is immediately suspicious of the two African Americans.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t demonstrate any kind of interest in, or affection for, its characters. They’re cardboard cutouts, there to represent postures rather than evoke our sympathy or humanity or even curiosity. If Alam’s novel is about all the awkward ways these two families collide and cohere, Esmail’s film at first seems to be about the opposite. He separates them, sending them off to discover crazy scenes of the end times on their own: planes falling from the sky, ominous red leaflets gathering in the sky like pestilential clouds. Maybe the point is that every person suffers their own Armageddon. The fragmentation of experiences, the inability to see anything as a whole, is perhaps meant to speak to our fractured, distracted psyches. But these characters remain stick figures, mere avatars placed in neato disaster sequences instead of humans experiencing an unspeakable horror. Even when they start to bond later in the film, through awkward monologues and old pop records, we never feel like we’re there with them. It’s too little, too late, and not very good to begin with.

Still, the film might have worked had the apocalyptic visions presented onscreen been interesting, or terrifying, or even convincing. (There are, after all, plenty of good disaster movies with lousy characters and even worse dialogue.) But Esmail uses the story’s ambiguity almost like a get-out-of-jail-free card, piling on the weird events without actually telling us what’s happening. He half-asses it, in other words. This feels more like a collection of cool ideas the writer-director jotted down and collected in a box rather than scenes that belong to the same emotional and consequential continuum. (There are some nice bits nevertheless: An endless traffic jam of driverless Teslas on Auto-pilot driving into each other is an inspired idea that could one day show up in a better movie.)

Look, this is all just a fancy way of saying I didn’t buy anything in this picture — not the incidents, not the characters, not the dialogue. Maybe it’s just me. Esmail is a smart, creative guy. One does wonder though if he’s tried too hard to bend this material to his will rather than open himself up to see where these people and this premise take him. Even his camera, with its precise compositions and ominous moves, feels divorced from the actual drama onscreen. A dizzying bird’s-eye crane shot inside the house early on is nifty, to be sure, but when a variation on the same shot shows up again later, we might wonder if it would have worked better had it been deployed during a key turning point rather than as an early attempt to snazz things up. I was at times reminded of M. Night Shyamalan’s A Knock at the Cabin , another liberal adaptation of a small-scale apocalyptic novel released earlier this year. There, the director’s delicate handling of the material, his careful use of offscreen space, and the savvy drip-drip-drip of narrative information all contributed to an unnerving, moving experience. Through an intense focus on the particular, Shyamalan found the universal.

Leave the World Behind perhaps aspires to an Olympian vision of humanity, but Esmail is working with material built on specificity and interiority. Alam spent pages and pages cataloging the minutiae of his characters’ lives and thoughts, so that when they did and said the things they did and said, we could maybe try to understand them; small gestures and throwaway exchanges came from deep wells of detail and intimacy. Amanda’s brittleness and paranoia felt lived in, as did Clay’s Teflon pliability; their anxiety over their kids gathered force as the calamities mounted. In the novel, George and Ruth were a married couple and much older; their weary vulnerability added to the slow-burning tension.

Again, movie, book, different creatures, different creators. But shorn of all that context for the film, these characters’ behavior doesn’t entirely make sense, and not even this talented cast can make them breathe, especially with such a clunky, overly expository script. Who are these people? Do we care? Should we care? Does the film? As things proceed, we may ungenerously wonder if the writer-director, when he gives Amanda a bizarre opening speech about human striving that ends with her declaring, “I fucking hate people,” isn’t really talking about himself.

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leave the world behind
rumaan alam
ethan hawke
julia roberts
mahershala ali
myha'la herrold
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Review: ‘Ticket to Paradise’ has Julia Roberts and George Clooney, and that’s enough

A man and a woman with their shoes in their hands, laughing on a beach in the movie "Ticket to Paradise."

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Like we needed any additional proof, but the breezy new romantic comedy “Ticket to Paradise” confirms that Julia Roberts and George Clooney still look great in the air, on dry land or out at sea; wearing formalwear, swimsuits and wetsuits; bickering, bantering and burying the hatchet.

A sleepless night in a humid jungle cannot defeat Roberts’ iconic hair or mess with Clooney’s perfectly maintained scruff. Likewise, a movie mostly absent of surprises and character details cannot fully vanquish the appeal of seeing these two movie stars at a time when the viability of both movies and stars has come into question. At one point, their characters are called dinosaurs. Part of the appeal of “Ticket to Paradise” is seeing Roberts and Clooney together before they — and this type of glossy studio entertainment — become extinct.

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Morbid? Hey, we’re all getting older. Even Clooney’s sandpaper stubble is now sometimes hard to pick up, its color more salt than pepper. But I’m not being grim so much as leaning into the wistful tone of “Ticket to Paradise,” which has its leads musing about missed opportunities and reminiscing about their younger days when they lived by the adage “Why save the good stuff for later?”

A woman in an embroidered dress smiles at a man in a tuxedo.

When the film begins, the good stuff between Georgia (Roberts) and David (Clooney) appears to be in the distant rearview mirror. We’re introduced to these characters as director Ol Parker (“Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”), who wrote the film with Daniel Pipski, cuts between them recalling how they met and impulsively married 25 years ago. Their accounts differ. “Her parents thought she was too young,” David remembers. Georgia’s take? “They thought he wasn’t good enough for me.”

But again … distant rearview mirror. Georgia and David divorced 20 years ago for reasons, we learn, they themselves don’t seem to truly understand. That hasn’t stopped them from fashioning a festering animosity over the course of two decades, so much so that their daughter, Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), can’t bring herself to tell them that they’ll be seated next to each other at her college graduation. Good thing they’ll never have to see each other again, right? Right???

Plot mechanics necessitate a reunion, and we get one after Lily heads to Bali with her BFF, Wren (Billie Lourd), and decides to marry the first local seaweed farmer she meets, Gede (Maxime Bouttier). Mom and Dad pack their resortwear, call a truce and agree to a strategy: They’ll outwardly support their daughter’s plans, all the while sabotaging the wedding so the youngsters don’t make the same mistake that they made all those years ago.

Roberts has experience in this sort of thing, of course, having schemed to break up Cameron Diaz and Dermot Mulroney 25 years ago (!) in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” This movie is not as good as that rom-com classic , which featured a peak Rupert Everett and a subversive screenplay that wasn’t afraid to shade Roberts as a villain, albeit one you still rooted for. (Mostly. Maybe?)

A young man and woman sit at a table with a bottle of alcohol.

“Ticket to Paradise” doesn’t invest enough time or energy into the young lovers for you to care whether or not they make it to the altar. This movie is all about beautiful people, gorgeous scenery and the elders rekindling their romance, with the primary obstacles on that front being Georgia’s annoyingly adoring French boyfriend (the appealing Lucas Bravo from “Emily in Paris”) and the time it takes for them to realize their biggest mistake wasn’t their marriage, but their divorce.

But, if you’ve seen the movie’s trailer (or even if you haven’t), you probably know all that. Just as you know that Roberts’ unbridled laugh remains one of the great pleasures of film and that Clooney can play awkward dorkiness just as convincingly as suave elegance. If “Top Gun: Maverick’s” secret weapon was Tom Cruise going Mach 10, “Ticket to Paradise” attains its peak with Roberts and Clooney playing a fierce game of beer pong while silly dancing around to House of Pain .

Dinosaurs? Maybe. But let’s hope the asteroid doesn’t hit for a while.

'Ticket to Paradise'

Rated: PG-13, for some strong language and brief suggestive material Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 21 in general release

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When George Clooney Met Julia Roberts (Don’t Believe the Reports)

For their latest big-screen partnership, they play exes who take shots at each other. It’s not such a stretch to the fond insults they sling in real life.

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By Kyle Buchanan

Julia Roberts began the interview with a question: “Is George causing problems already?”

Her friend and frequent co-star George Clooney had preceded Roberts on our video call, dialing in from the Provence estate he shares with his wife, Amal. But the room he was sitting in was so streaked with sunlight that Clooney could barely be glimpsed amid all the lens flares, and as Roberts joined us, he was pulling patterned window curtains shut to no avail.

“Are you trying to show how outer your inner radiance is with this flare?” Roberts said.

Clooney peered at her Zoom thumbnail. “You’re one to talk with that soft lens,” he cracked.

“I have a 25-year-old computer!” Roberts said.

Rat-a-tat teasing is how Roberts and Clooney prefer to communicate: “It’s our natural rhythm of joyful noise,” she said. Their rapport has sustained a big-screen partnership spanning several films, from “Ocean’s Eleven” in 2001 to their newest entry, the romantic comedy “ Ticket to Paradise ” (Oct. 21), which casts them as warring exes who reunite to stop the surprise wedding of their daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) to a seaweed farmer (Maxime Bouttier) she met during a graduation trip to Bali. As her divorced parents team up, their old spark is rekindled; by the end of the movie, they’ve gone from exes to something like XO.

When I spoke to Roberts and Clooney in late August, no light was streaming through Roberts’s bay windows at all: It was only 6 in the morning in San Francisco, where Roberts and her husband, Danny Moder, live with their three teenage children. Roberts had requested the early start so that she could send the kids off to school after the interview, and she noted that she was no stranger to early rising: For one sunrise scene in “Ticket to Paradise,” she had a 3 a.m. call time, the earliest she’s ever had to report to set in her career.

“I had to get there at 1 a.m.,” Clooney joked, “because of the work they do on my face beforehand.”

“All the taping and spackle,” Roberts said, letting loose her famous laugh.

Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.

When you read “Ticket to Paradise,” did you each have the other in mind?

GEORGE CLOONEY They sent me the script, and it was clearly written for Julia and I. In fact, the characters’ names were originally Georgia and Julian. I hadn’t really done a romantic comedy since “ One Fine Day ” [1996] — I haven’t succeeded like Julia has in that forum — but I read it and thought, “Well, if Jules is up for it, I think this could be fun.”

JULIA ROBERTS It somehow only made sense with George, just based on our chemistry. We have a friendship that people are aware of, and we’re going into it as this divorced couple. Half of America probably thinks we are divorced, so we have that going for us.

CLOONEY We should be divorced because I’m married now, so that would be really bad. Just saying.

ROBERTS Also, George and I felt a lot of happy responsibility in wanting to make a comedy together, to give people a holiday from life after the world had gone through a really hard time. It’s like when you’re walking down the sidewalk and it’s cold outside and you get to that nice patch of sun that touches your back and you go, “Oh, yeah. This is exactly what I needed to feel.”

Is it true that the two of you had never met before “ Ocean’s Eleven ”?

ROBERTS The funny thing about meeting George was that in the press, people had already pegged us as pals. I’d read about going to a party at George’s, and I thought, “Well, I have to meet this guy at some point because he sounds like a great time.”

CLOONEY I’m fun, man!

ROBERTS There’s some alchemy about us that you can sense from a distance, I think.

CLOONEY I’ve always been drawn to Julia, for a lot of reasons. One of them is that she has forever been a proper movie star but she’s totally willing to not take herself seriously, and that makes such a difference in life because we’ve spent a lot of time together. She’s also a really gifted actress. She works really hard but you never see her sweat, and it’s the quality I appreciate most in my favorite actors, like Spencer Tracy.

Julia, you’re an executive producer of the film alongside George, and you obviously have extensive experience in romantic comedies. What point of view do you bring as a veteran of the genre?

ROBERTS This is a genre that I love to participate in and watch, and I think they are hard to get right. There is a really simple math to it, but how do you make it special? How do you keep people interested when you can kind of predict what is coming?

Has Hollywood had trouble answering those questions? There are way fewer romantic comedies than there used to be, and you’ve said that “Ticket to Paradise” was the first rom-com script since “Notting Hill” (1999) and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (1997) that you really sparked to .

ROBERTS I think we didn’t appreciate the bumper crop of romantic comedies that we had then. You don’t see all the effort and puppet strings because it’s fun and sweet and people are laughing and kissing and being mischievous. Also, I think it’s different to be reading those scripts at 54 years old. I can’t read a story like “My Best Friend’s Wedding” where I’m falling off a chair and all these things because — —

CLOONEY You’d break a hip.

ROBERTS I’d break a hip! Oh, George. But it was nice to read something that was age-appropriate, where the jokes made sense, and I appreciated and understood what these people were going through. That’s what people want to see, your connection to a piece of work. They want to see the heart space that you have for it — not just, “Oh, do something funny because we love that.”

But funny is still important. There’s a scene in “Ticket to Paradise” where your characters drunkenly dance to the song “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” embarrassing their daughter and her friends. Was that choreographed for maximum mortification, or did you just wing it?

ROBERTS People always want to choreograph it, but you can’t put steps to it. You have to just open the box and let the magic fly.

CLOONEY I remember early on in my career, I had to do a kissing scene with this girl and the director goes, “Not like that .” And I was like, “Dude, that’s my move! That’s what I do in real life!” It was sort of that same way here, because everyone had plans for how we should dance, and then we were like, “Well, actually we’ve got some really bad dance moves in real life.” Julia and I have done all those moves before, that’s the sickest part.

ROBERTS Oh, all around the world.

CLOONEY And Kaitlyn and Max were actually horrified, weren’t they?

ROBERTS It was hysterical, they were speechless. If Danny and I were doing that in front of our kids, they would be like, “Yeah, dig me a hole, I’m out of here.”

George, I haven’t moved on from that anecdote of the director criticizing how you kiss. I don’t know how you ever recovered.

CLOONEY And we kiss in this. But I don’t want to give the whole shop away.

It’s a romantic comedy. I think audiences are expecting a kiss.

ROBERTS One kiss. And we did it for, like, six months.

CLOONEY Yeah. I told my wife, “It took 80 takes.” She was like, “What the hell?”

ROBERTS It took 79 takes of us laughing and then the one take of us kissing.

CLOONEY Well, we had to get it right.

You filmed the movie in Australia, right?

CLOONEY We started in Hamilton Island, with all these wild birds, and Julia had the house down just below Amal and me and the kids. I would come out in the early mornings and be like, “Caa-caa,” and Julia would come out and be like, “Caa-caa.” And then we’d bring her down a cup of coffee. She was Aunt Juju to my kids.

ROBERTS The Clooneys saved me from complete loneliness and despair. We were in a bubble, and it’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my family. I don’t think I’ve spent that much time by myself since I was 25.

CLOONEY And also, when Danny and the kids did come visit, that meant they had to fly into Sydney and quarantine for two weeks by themselves before she could see them.

ROBERTS So close and yet so far. When we first got to Australia and we were all quarantining, you kind of go a little bit cuckoo. I remember right around Day 11, I was like, “Who am I? Where am I? What is this room that I never leave?” It’s a funny thing. I hadn’t really anticipated all that.

CLOONEY That’s why they invented alcohol.

ROBERTS Or chocolate chip cookies.

CLOONEY That too.

Julia, this is your first movie role in four years. You’ve said that you consider yourself a homemaker, but your children are all teenaged now — do you think your work-life balance will change when they are grown and out of the house?

ROBERTS I just take it all as it comes. I try to be super present and not plan, and I don’t have any upcoming acting jobs. Getting back to a routine feels really good. And I love being at home, I love being a mom. Being in Australia was really challenging because of all the Covid regulations, and I think it’s a real testament to friendship and to the creative environment we were in that it wasn’t even harder, because I’m not built to be one person anymore. It’s just not in my cellular data.

George, you recently took several years off from movie acting, too. When you have that lengthy period of time between roles, is there any anxiety as you are about to start up again?

CLOONEY If you don’t get that nervous feeling in your stomach every time you start work, then you’re way too confident for this job and it’ll show in your performance. The minute you think you’ve got it or you know what you’re doing, then you really shouldn’t be doing it anymore.

One of the co-stars of “Ticket to Paradise” is Billie Lourd, daughter of the late Carrie Fisher. Her father, Bryan Lourd, has been your longtime agent, George, so I would imagine you’ve known Billie since — —

CLOONEY Since she was born.

Is it wild to share scenes with an actress you’ve known since she was a baby?

ROBERTS Wilder still to be holding her baby while she’s on the set. How about that? Life just going right along.

CLOONEY Yeah. Fun being 61, let me tell you. It comes fast, man.

Sixty-one but still willing to do a shirtless scene — opposite an angry dolphin, no less.

ROBERTS And looking fine, thank you very much!

CLOONEY That was a pretty quick shot, I’ll tell you that. The dolphin looked better.

Kyle Buchanan , a Los Angeles-based pop culture reporter, writes The Projectionist column. He was previously a senior editor at Vulture, New York Magazine's entertainment website, where he covered the movie industry. More about Kyle Buchanan

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Ticket to Paradise review: Julia Roberts and George Clooney ride a slow boat to midlife romance

They play divorcees bickering their way through Bali in Ol Parker's shiny, anodyne comedy.

Their hair is still glorious; their teeth gleam like satellites. It's the rom-coms that got small, not these monolithic movie stars, and Ticket to Ride (in theaters Friday) is apparently the best that 2022 could conjure for two of the genre's last unicorns: an antic wisp of sun-soaked shenanigans, as light and vaporous as a Bali breeze.

That's actually where the story lands after a brief, pained exposition: Divorced for two decades, L.A. gallerist Georgia ( Julia Roberts ) and architect David ( George Clooney ) are happy to interact as little as possible beyond the one good thing their union produced, a daughter named Lily ( Dopesick 's Kaitlyn Dever ). She's a smart, sweet kid, a newly minted law-school graduate off to Indonesia with her best friend ( Billie Lourd ) for a little post-grad Rumspringa before real life begins. And then, something like 37 days later, she's in love — engaged to a local Bali boy (Maxime Bouttier), and ready to shed her career plans for a life as a seaweed farmer's wife.

Cue the parental freakout; soon Georgia and David are on a plane, united in their determination to stop Lily from making their same matrimonial mistakes, even if they can hardly stand to share an armrest. Will they bicker endlessly? With pleasure. Will there be pratfalls and misunderstandings? Uncountable. Might they fall in love all over again? Oh, hush your mouth. Director Ol Parker , who also cowrote the screenplay with Daniel Pipski, is probably best known as the man behind 2018's musical fizz-supreme Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again , and he gives Ticket that same kind of Technicolor gloss, minus the spangled jumpsuits and the ABBA soundtrack (though Roberts does seem to wear a lot of rompers here).

The movie's set pieces are stacked with luxe location shots, like Nancy Meyers with a passport, and broad, mugging comedy spills from every scene. Snake bites, lost boats, romantic betrayal; it's all treated with the same weight, which is to say none at all. Emily in Paris star Lucas Bravo is game and très français as Georgia's adoring airline-pilot boyfriend, and Lourd does what she can with a girl whose main character notes seem to be "kooky alcoholic." Bouttier, as Lily's dreamboat fiancé, has dime-sized dimples and few other distinguishing characteristics — though his extended family do get several buoyant scenes, mostly in the service of innocuous culture-clash punchlines.

That leaves Clooney and Roberts to do the heavy lifting on a script that might easily float away without their movie-star force field to hold it in place. The dialogue aims for snappy His Girl Friday -style repartee, though it more often lands on sitcom; the jokes — isn't marriage just a drag ? — are calibrated to reach the cheap seats, and so is the sentiment. The pair's chemistry feels more familial than romantic, really, but the power of their twined charisma seems like it should have its own collective noun: a pizzazz of mass appeal, a glamour of enchantment. There's no doubt both actors deserve sharper, less silly material than this, but when they're playing beer pong in a Bali bar and drunkenly pogo-ing to House of Pain's "Jump Around," Paradise is almost, for a moment, a place on Earth. Grade: C+

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, julia roberts stars in fascinating thriller homecoming.

In the eighth episode of the Amazon Prime thriller “Homecoming,” a character says, “Let’s be really careful how we unpack this whole thing.” It’s an intentionally meta line in that the show, stylishly directed by “Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail , is all about how we unpack things—memories, traumas, betrayals. It is a puzzle box of a show, one that plays with form and episodic structure to keep you confused and uncertain about what’s really happened to the characters you’re watching. It’s a show about which I expect some really interesting thinkpieces to be written about how we process trauma and so regularly seek to just forget instead. Most of all, it’s a thriller that actually earns the word Hitchcockian with a second-half dynamic that alternately echoes “Psycho” and “ Vertigo .” With great ideas, an interesting mystery, and a phenomenal ensemble, the only thing holding “Homecoming” back from the top tier of current television is a common issue with streaming service shows—pacing. Even at ten half-hour episodes, “Homecoming” drags its feet a few too many times, sinking back into valleys after notable peaks in episodes four and eight. It could have been a masterpiece at five or six episodes.

“Homecoming” takes place in two time periods, defined by a distinct formal choice. The material that occurs in 2018 is shot in full widescreen, allowing Esmail to take full advantage of his many stylistic habits (for example, he loves shooting people overhead going about their jobs like rats in a maze). Half the show takes place years later, and that material looks like it was shot on an iPhone. The quality is less defined and the frame is constricted, reflecting its protagonist’s limited viewpoint.

That protagonist is Heidi Bergman ( Julia Roberts ), who is now a waitress but used to work at a facility called Homecoming, a place designed to help returning soldiers deal with PTSD. A Department of Defense employee named Thomas Carrasco ( Shea Whigham ) opens an investigation into an old claim that a soldier named Walter Cruz ( Stephan James ) was being held prisoner at Homecoming. He wanted to leave but was not allowed to do so. Heidi claims not to remember Walter at all, and, come to think of it, barely remembers Homecoming. Why is that? In flashbacks, we meet a number of key players at the facility, including Heidi’s boss Colin ( Bobby Cannavale ) and an employee named Craig ( Alex Karpovsky ). The incredible ensemble is filled out by Dermot Mulroney , Jeremy Allen White , Marianne Jean-Baptiste , and the always-wonderful Sissy Spacek .

“Homecoming” bounces back and forth between Heidi’s job at Homecoming and what results from Carrasco’s investigation into the complaint about Walter. Homecoming seems like a relatively helpful facility. The soldiers are given all kinds of treatment, including social roleplaying with Craig and one-on-one time with Heidi, where she gets much closer with Walter. He seems to be progressing well, but there are signs that something sinister is happening, and not just because Colin is such an obvious villain. Cannavale is fantastic here, perfectly playing the kind of white-collar animal who takes any opportunity in front of him, no matter the morality. I love how he’s always moving. Even when he’s on the phone with Heidi, Esmail never allows him to just be seated at a desk. He’s walking, pacing, skulking around. And when the show gets Cannavale and Roberts together in the back half, its Hitchcock influences come to the fore.

Whigham is also excellent as a government lackey who realizes there’s something odd about this old complaint. He doesn’t play him as a morally righteous superhero as much as someone who has fallen into something that he knows is important. Roberts’ performance is one I expect to be divisive. There are times when it felt too flat to me, but that’s arguably inherent in the character, one who is out of the loop and manipulated in both time frames. It’s a difficult role, and Roberts is good if not the best on the show. Spacek only has a few scenes but kills them, and Stephan James, along with his work in “If Beale Street Could Talk,” is proving that he’s about to be such a big star that you won’t remember a time that he wasn’t. He’s so charismatic and magnetic here.

“Homecoming” can be so good that its occasional pacing problem is all the more disappointing. There are times when you can literally feel the narrative grind to a halt in order to fill episode length, especially after narrative peaks in episodes four and eight, although it helps that these episodes are half the typical running time of network dramas (I'm all in on this new trend with this and "Maniac" being half-hours instead of hour-longs). Be patient. Get through those valleys. There’s enough value in the peaks still to come.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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2024 native american writers seminar fellows revealed, andrew garfield to co-star opposite julia roberts in luca guadagnino’s thriller ‘after the hunt’ for imagine and amazon mgm studios.

By Justin Kroll

Justin Kroll

Film Editor

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The project has been a hot property going back to when Imagine landed the script and began developing it at the top of the year with every A-list director and star chasing it. Once Guadagnino and Roberts were attached, Amazon moved fast to land the pic and given the star power already involved it’s no surprise top talent like Garfield are now filling out the ensemble.

The Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning actor and Oscar-nominated Garfield who will next be seen in A24 and Studio Canal’s We Live In Time opposite Florence Pugh. Garfield was last seen in FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven , which landed him his first Emmy nomination. Previous credits include Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick… Boom!, Spider-Man: No Way Home , Searchlight’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye , Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge , Gia Coppola’s Mainstream , David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake , Andy Serkis’ Breathe , Martin Scorsese’s Silence opposite Adam Driver, Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes , David Fincher’s The Social Network , and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 , which combined grossed over $1.5 billion at the box office.

Garfield is represented by Gordon & French, CAA and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.

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Richard Gere Doesn't Think He And Julia Roberts Could Recreate Their Pretty Woman Chemistry, But I Disagree

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Rom-coms are a tried and true genre in the film world, one capable of making tons of money and piercing the pop culture lexicon. 1990's Pretty Woman is widely considered one of the best romantic comedies of all time , in no small part thanks to the chemistry shared by Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. The latter actor doesn't think he and Roberts could recreate their Pretty Woman chemistry, but I disagree.

Pretty Woman (which can be streamed with a Hulu subscription ) is truly iconic, and has influenced countless rom-coms that followed. While fans like myself would love to see this pair of A-listers share the screen again (especially after Roberts returned to rom-coms with Ticket to Paradise ) Gere recently cast doubt on that possibility. While speaking with Deadline about the movie's success, he shared why doesn't think they could strike gold twice. In his words:

That was lightning in a bottle; you can’t make that happen again. If that was easy and you can do it again, the computer would do it. It was a moment in all of our lives. She can’t be in that same place then, I can’t be in that place. We don’t have Garry to hold it all together, his lightness, sense of humor and romanticism.

There you have it. It sounds like Richard Gere isn't convinced that another rom-com with Julia Roberts would ended up being a success. On top of the timing of Pretty Woman being excellent, he also credits late filmmaker Garry Marshall as the reason why the 1990 film worked.

Indeed, Garry Marshall has a lasting legacy, both as a filmmaker and as an actor. And other actors like The Princess Diaries ' Anne Hathaway have credited him as the reason why their movie worked.

Then again, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts are wildly good actors who no doubt have the talent and name recognition that could make another romantic comedy project work (assuming that the material is good). So I think that the Chicago actor's comments aren't necessarily true, unless they were trying to make a sequel to Pretty Woman .

I previously mentioned Ticket to Paradise , but it seems like a prime example as to why Gere and Roberts could totally pull off another rom-com. The movie (which is streaming with a Peacock subscription ) was totally delightful, largely because of the outstanding movie stars who were at its center: Roberts and George Clooney. So clearly there's an audience for rom-coms focusing on that caliber of actor, which Gere definitely is.

Hopefully the success of Ticket to Paradise inspires more romantic comedies featuring iconic actors like Clooney and Roberts. For example, some f ans are hoping that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan get one more rom-com . In the meantime, check the 2024 movie release dates to plan your next movie experience.

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10 Underrated Julia Roberts Movies That Deserve More Love

Leave the World Behind proves Julia Roberts is still among the queens of Hollywood, but even so, some of her films are highly underrated.

When talking about iconic actresses in the entertainment industry, one of the very first names that probably comes to mind is Julia Roberts , a major star who has earned widespread acclaim from critics and the affection of audiences worldwide with roles across all genres. After first gaining notoriety in the late-1980s with films such as Mystic Pizza and Steel Magnolias , Roberts emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the 1990 blockbuster Pretty Woman , a film that also made her a queen of the romantic comedy .

Throughout her career, Roberts appeared in all kinds of productions, proving that her acting skills are not limited to characters in love stories. She excelled in films such as Erin Brockovich , Ocean's Eleven, and Wonder , among many others, and continues to tackle new challenges to this day. In fact, her most recent film premiered just recently: Netflix's Leave the World Behind , in which she stars alongside Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali.

Roberts is a multi-awarded artist who, thanks to the box office performance of her many movies, has turned into one of the most bankable stars in the industry. But even a superstar like her has her fair share of movies that didn't quite get the love they truly deserved. Here are 10 of her most underrated movies.

10 Valentine's Day (2010)

Valentine's day.

To kick things off is Valentine's Day , Garry Marshall's 2010 film that hugely disappointed critics, but still became a box office hit. This movie features one of the most impressive ensemble casts in the industry, and follows different characters whose stories intertwine on Valentine's Day. Roberts plays Kate, a U.S. military captain who flies home for just a few hours to reconnect with her son.

What Makes It Great

Marshall played a major role in Roberts' career, as he directed the film that first brought her to stardom. Valentine's Day marked their third collaboration after many, many years of not having worked together, and while it may not be everyone's cup of tea, it is a production that any rom-com fan will love, with a predictable yet hugely entertaining story that features brilliant performances. Rent on Apple TV

9 Mirror Mirror (2012)

Mirror mirror.

2012 marked the premiere of Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror , a fantasy comedy based on the well-known story of Snow White, starring Lily Collins and Julia Roberts. In it, Collins plays the beloved princess, who, after being banished by her wicked stepmother, teams up with seven dwarves to sneak back into the kingdom and reclaim what is rightfully hers.

Upon its release, Mirror Mirror was heavily criticized for not bringing anything new to the table compared to other adaptations of the renowed fairy tale. However, the film manages to delight audiences with a story that is both fun and whimsical, with well-constructed characters and several plot tweaks that pay off in full. Plus, the costumes are amazing, and Roberts excels in playing a villain who, against all odds, is quite likable. Stream on Max

8 Secret in Their Eyes (2015)

Secret in their eyes.

The Argentine film El Secreto de Sus Ojos hit the silver screen in 2009 and took the world by storm, winning the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film and many other accolades. Six years later, its American remake, Secret in Their Eyes , premiered, with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman, and Julia Roberts leading the cast. This production follows a group of FBI investigators who spend years trying to solve the gruesome murder of the daughter of one of them.

Secret in Their Eyes was harshly panned for not being as good as the original film, which is truly a masterpiece. But even so, this thriller is definitely worth watching, not only for the performances of its cast, but also for the adjustments they made to the original production that take the audience by surprise and keep them glued to the screen until the very end. Stream on Tubi

Related: Julia Robert’s 15 Best Movies, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes

7 Eat Pray Love (2010)

Eat Pray Love is a 2010 film by Ryan Murphy, based on Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir that changed the lives of readers worldwide four years earlier. Roberts stars as the author, who, in the midst of an existential crisis, embarks on a journey through Italy, India, and Bali to rediscover herself and the things that really matter.

Eat Pray Love underwent a very similar fate to Secret in Their Eyes , It was deemed vastly inferior to the original material. However, considering that adapting a book to the silver screen is no easy task, we can say that Murphy's film certainly strikes a chord with the audience and conveys the essence of the original piece, aided by brilliant performances from its star-studded cast . Rent on AppleTV

6 Ocean's Twelve (2004)

Ocean's twelve.

Ocean's Twelve hit the silver screen in 2004, becoming the first sequel to Steven Soderbergh's 2001 blockbuster that revolutionized the world. This heist comedy film features the original cast, once again with George Clooney and Brad Pitt at the helm, and follows Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his crew, who must orchestrate another heist to return the million-dollar loot they stole from casino owner Terry Benedict.

Yet again, Ocean's Twelve was another of Roberts' films doomed for not living up to the original. And while in many ways this is accurate, the movie breaks away from its predecessor by introducing the characters in a different context, with a story that is every bit as entertaining and funny as the original. Ocean's Twelve is a heartwarming film, perfect to watch on the days when one craves a light-hearted movie that doesn't require you to think too much. Rent on AppleTV

5 Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)

One year after emerging as a star thanks to Pretty Woman , Roberts starred in Sleeping with the Enemy , a film by Joseph Ruben, based on Nancy Price's novel. In it, she plays Laura, a woman who fakes her own death and relocates to escape her violent husband, but must confront him once again after the man discovers the hoax and tracks her down in her new home.

Sleeping with the Enemy has been terribly panned by critics as unimpressive and overly predictable. However, this psychological thriller not only manages to keep the audience on edge from start to finish, but is also a movie that proved how versatile Roberts could be as an actress. Especially considering it followed Pretty Woman , this movie showed the actress was capable of bouncing from light-hearted fanfare to something darker and more sinister — and she did this seamlessly. Stream on Paramount+

4 Ticket to Paradise (2022)

Ticket to paradise.

Read Our Review

The 2022 rom-com Ticket to Paradise marked a new collaboration between Clooney and Roberts, two stars and friends that audiences love to spot together on-screen. In this Ol Parker film, they play David and Georgia, two exes who can't stand one another, but must join forces to prevent their daughter from marrying a young man she just met in Bali.

Ticket to Paradise has all the ingredients of romantic comedies that any genre fan would love. It's a simple though nonetheless entertaining story, and although it's quite predictable, like many of the genre's greatest movies, it's definitely an amazing, feel-good movie. Plus, Roberts and Clooney are charming in their roles, displaying a chemistry that transcends the screen. Stream on Prime Video

3 Conspiracy Theory (1997)

1997 marked the premiere of Conspiracy Theory , an action thriller film directed by Richard Donner and starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts. This movie follows a cab driver fond of conspiracy theories, whose life takes a dangerous turn when one of his fantasies turns out to be true.

Conspiracy Theory is an entertaining movie, whose gripping plot keeps you glued to the screen from start to finish. Probably the most remarkable element of this film is the chemistry between its leads and their ability to portray their complex characters to perfection. Rent on AppleTV

2 Dying Young (1991)

Dying Young is another film that Roberts appeared in shortly after rising to fame with Pretty Woman . It is directed by Joel Schumacher, based on a novel by Marti Leimbach, and features Campbell Scott in a co-starring role. It follows Hilary, a young girl hired as the primary caregiver for Victor, a man undergoing leukemia treatment. While their relationship initially appears to be merely professional, over time it evolves into a one-of-a-kind romance.

Schumacher's film is a beautiful story that reflects on the boundaries of love, with well-constructed characters and impeccable performances that will certainly make the audience cry their eyes out. Besides its great actors, the film features a memorable soundtrack by James Newton Howard that was ultimately nominated at the Grammy Awards. Rent on Prime Video

1 Runaway Bride (1999)

After Pretty Woman 's phenomenal success in 1990, Garry Marshall re-teamed with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in the 1999 rom-com Runaway Bride . In this rom-com, Roberts plays Maggie, a young woman known around town for having ditched three grooms at the altar. Her story arouses the attention of New York journalist Ike (Gere), who writes an unflattering article about her that eventually gets him fired. Determined to save his career, Ike travels to meet her, not knowing that the trip is about to change his life.

Runaway Bride is a hidden gem in the romantic comedy genre that features one of the best movie couples out there. As such, it can't get any better than that. Despite not being as memorable as Pretty Woman , the film is heartwarming, invites us to reflect on major themes, such as self-realization and authenticity, and treats us to solid performances from the lead actors and the rest of the cast. Stream on Paramount+

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Forget Rom-Coms, ‘90s Julia Roberts Was Actually a Thriller Queen

Julia Roberts did a lot more than just rom-coms in the 90s.

Pretty Woman , My Best Friend's Wedding , Notting Hill , and Runaway Bride were all smash rom-com hits delivered by the one and only Julia Roberts in the decade of the 90s. Some of the biggest blockbusters of the era, these films made Roberts one of the most bankable stars in the history of cinema at the turn of the millennium. But, did you know that she was also very successful in thrillers as well? With entries like Flatliners , Sleeping with the Enemy , The Pelican Brief , and Conspiracy Theory , the megastar cashed in quite a bit in the dramatic genre, too, and starred opposite some of the industry's most serious actors. Even though it's the hugely successful rom-com that she is widely remembered for, let's take a look at some of the films that rightfully earn Julia Roberts the title of 90s Thriller Queen.

RELATED : Jennifer Aniston and Julia Roberts Team Up for Body Swap Comedy at Amazon Studios

Julia Roberts Followed the Success of 'Pretty Woman' With 1990 Thriller 'Flatliners'

When Roberts took on the role of medical student Rachel Mannus in the Joel Schumacher -directed Flatliners in August 1990, she was riding high on the success of her breakout performance in Pretty Woman . That certainly didn't hurt the box office numbers of the film, but it was also the actress' first turn in a very dark and ominous movie about a group of medical students who dabble with near-death experiments to see if they can get a glimpse of what lies beyond this life. Starring alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon , Roberts more than held her own in a group of young actors who were still finding their way in Hollywood at the turn of the decade. Her portrayal of Rachel is earnest and grounded, delivering some memorable moments in the bleak and suspenseful thriller that showed audiences immediately that she was far more than a one-trick pony.

'Sleeping With the Enemy' Was One of the First Films to Address Domestic Abuse

A year later, Roberts doubled-down on the serious side of things and delivered a terrific performance opposite Patrick Bergin in the very important film Sleeping With the Enemy . In 1991, few films had addressed the horror of domestic abuse the way that this heart-pounding thriller did. Based on the 1987 Nancy Price novel of the same name, Sleeping With the Enemy is a serious reality check about an overprotective, controlling, and jealous husband who goes to extreme lengths to keep his wife under his thumb. Roberts is very convincing as Laura Williams Burney, a woman paralyzed by fear who grows more terrified of her domineering husband Martin (Bergin) as he begins to gaslight and psychologically abuse her while also threatening physical harm if she doesn't stay in check. Sleeping With the Enemy was a drastic departure from anything Roberts had done in a blossoming career and once again showed that she had almost limitless range as a performer. Her role in the film resonated with audiences to the tune of $175 million at the box office on a budget of just $19 million, clearly showing that Roberts could be successful outside of the rom-com genre. Sleeping With the Enemy was also an impactful movie in that it brought the very serious issue of abuse and sociopathic narcissistic behavior out of the shadows in an era when it wasn't being explored and exposed enough.

Julia Roberts Joins the John Grisham Adaptation Craze in 'The Pelican Brief'

In the mid-90s, it seemed like every other thriller movie being produced was an adaptation of the wildly successful and prolific law thriller novelist John Grisham, beginning with The Firm and ending with The Rainmaker . All of Hollywood's heaviest hitters were nabbing parts and cashing in on the taut legal thrillers that Grisham was churning out almost yearly. So Roberts decided that she wanted to get in on the mix as well by starring in The Pelican Brief as Darby Shaw, a law student who writes a brief that incriminates some very important players in the deaths of two Supreme Court justices and finds herself in the crosshairs of deadly assassins while trying to expose the plot behind the murders. This was the first real action thriller for Roberts where we got to see her play cat and mouse games alongside co-star Denzel Washington as she must literally run for her life in order to stay alive long enough to get to the bottom of the plot. And again, Roberts is up to the task of giving the audience an exhilarating and captivating performance in a film that is both smart and super amped up on adrenaline from beginning to end.

Julia Roberts Conquers the Psychological Thriller in 'Conspiracy Theory'

In 1997, Roberts starred opposite Mel Gibson (in what was a powerhouse duo at the time) in the taut political psychological drama, Conspiracy Theory directed by Richard Donner . Roberts plays a lawyer at the New York Justice Department who befriends an oddball taxi driver who has some off-the-wall ideas about all manner of government secrets and conspiracies. She humors him only because Jerry (Gibson) had previously saved her from a mugging, but generally doesn't take him very seriously, and she shouldn't. But when she finds herself in the middle of an investigation involving the death of her father, she becomes a little more open-minded about one of Jerry's theories that proves to be much more than the paranoid ravings of an eccentric blue-collar cab driver. Roberts delivers another fantastic performance as she jumps head-first down a rabbit hole that will put her and Jerry's lives at risk. Roberts has always been like a chameleon with her uncanny ability to rise to the occasion and give memorable performances that fit the part she's playing. But despite her versatility, all of her roles have one thing in common — she takes the viewer on a ride where for at least a couple of hours, you can suspend any disbelief you have about the larger-than-life Hollywood star and settle in for a satisfying and thrilling experience.

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COMMENTS

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