There’s no denying the actual Sideways is well made, acted, directed… So okay, fine, technically and by any objective standard of filmmaking there’s little to criticize, and much to tout – you got me there. But there’s an ugliness to it and most especially to its view of humanity. Sideways puts me off. Sure the film’s tour of the human condition is methodical, but the tour is also dark, chilly and coldly cynical. Like a successful sterile surgery it impressed me much, but plant an interest for a return visit it did not.
Two Tickets To Paradise may not have a Sideways budget, but it will leave you the opposite of cold after our three protagonist’s road trip has come to an end and all personal issues are snugly tucked away. Paradise is a relatable thing for anyone who’s experienced those late thirties It Wasn’t Supposed To Be Like This shudders. Yes, I’m talking to you.
Sweeney is Billy McGriff, a workaday guy doing the nine-to-five shuffle in the same small Pennsylvania town he grew up in. Tortured by the fleeting fame he once enjoyed in a rock and roll band, he finds the love of his gorgeous wife Kate (Moira Kelly) more than enough compensation for the What If? he drags around like a bag of rocks.
Mark (John C. McGinley) has bigger problems, most of them self-inflicted. His bag of rocks involves a sick father (Pat Hingle, hitting the mark in a small role) in a nursing home, his own brush with Mt. Olympus as a high school athlete, and a gambling problem that’s made him a hunted man and nearly cost him his wife and son.
The third player in this tribunal of broken dreams mixed with complacency is Jason (Paul Hipp), one of those guys who has a love hate relationship with the letting of his parents run his life.
After a fast paced twenty minutes of the humorous and unexpected our three lifelong buddies pile in the old beater and hit the road headed for Florida and a big bowl game. The least of their problems is that there’s three of them and only two tickets, but this ends up being a pretty ingenuous story device to believably take us through the rest of the film.
There are times when the low-budget rears its head and a few small narrative bumps occur along the way, but this is a small price to pay for an easygoing trip with three guys you like right off the bat. And that’s the secret of the film’s success. In his directing debut, Sweeney (who co-wrote with Brian Currie) does what journeyman directors sometimes can’t: we like these fellas, and even when they’re behaving badly we’re invested for the duration and hopeful they work through what’s holding them back.
We also believe in the relationship. The chit-chat, bantering back and forth fits like an old, warm glove. A writer/director has a whole half-minute to sell a lifelong relationship like this, which is not an easy bar to reach and a make or break moment for any film. First impressions matter and this one succeeds in the best of ways: you never notice — you’re just into it.
Sweeney’s just as successful in examining the universal theme of How Did My Life Get Here? and his narrative never loses focus of what the whole business of making the film is really about (at least, in my opinion): three guys who over the years became self-fulling prophecies of their own disillusionment. Sweeney’s saying: You can’t make yourself a rock and roll star, you can’t make yourself a football star, and you don’t have to take crap from your parents. Gentlemen, you’re in good health and living in America; I promise you happiness is but a few smart decisions away.
The theme works us over a a bit, as well, and leaves us something to take home after the lights come up.
To be sure, road trip movies are boilerplate, but they’re boilerplate for a reason: they work. The key to success is to check off the boxes enroute. At various times, we the audience must laugh, anticipate disaster, shake our collective heads with dismay, be surprised (preferably by Vanna White) and finally find ourselves moved and wishing it weren’t over. Paradise hits ’em all.
The performances are stellar. Sweeney carries Midwestern wear with remarkable ease and McGinley was born for tightly wound humor and affable neediness. Paul Hipp convinces in his first big role, the lovely Moira Kelly leaves you wanting more, and The Mighty Ed Harris shows up for a scene doing that thing Ed Harris does so well.
The anti-Sideways shows a real affection its characters, and along the way the same for our veterans, John Wayne, and without having to say so, the promise of America open to anyone with the making of a few smart decisions. This is a film made on a shoestring and a prayer, but you can’t buy heart, and that beats in every single frame.
The soundtrack, however, sounds like gajillion bucks.
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