If there's one surefire way to draw people to your streaming service, grabbing movies that star the biggest actors on the planet has to be it. Netflix has underlined the strength of that approach with its latest number-one movie in the UK – Ticket to Paradise.
This 2022 comedy stars none other than George Clooney and Julia Roberts, both of whom are previous Oscar-winners (although it's been a few years), and has clearly made quite a splash on the platform. Not everyone agrees, based on a significant variance in ratings, but many fans are loving it.
The movie sees Clooney and Roberts play divorcees who have to band together when they fly out to Thailand for their daughter's wedding to a young man neither of them has ever met.
They want to put an end to the engagement, but that also means at least temporarily burying the hatchet between themselves, too. You'll be shocked to hear this, but sparks might just start to fly despite their estrangement and apparent animosity.
Netflix looks like it's made a great strategic move by adding the film to its library – and its Rotten Tomatoes scores really tell a story. On the critical side, the film was greeted with really middling verdicts, earning a score of 56%.
Where audiences are concerned, however, it's a much more resounding success, with an 87% score showing that many people have really vibed with the movie since it came out. In an era where feel-good movies are topping the streaming charts even with shockingly low scores, this means it's no surprise that Ticket to Paradise has done so well.
Some of those user reviews show just what people are enjoying, too – one person wrote: "I loved this movie! What's not to love about a movie with both Julia Roberts and George Clooney?" That's a simple rhetorical question, but it nails the fact that the two have had great chemistry for ages, and in multiple movies together.
It also underlines just how important big stars are for streaming platforms in the never-ending battle to be declared the best streaming service. While the likes of Apple TV+ can boast that it's attracted Clooney himself to upcoming projects, Netflix has demonstrated that you can get similar boosts by plumbing a star's back catalogue.
