Producers: Alfonso Cuarón, Bonnie Curtis, Julie Lynn  Director: Rodrigo García   Screenplay: Rodrigo García   Cast: Ethan Hawke, Ewan McGregor, Maribel Verdú, Vondie Curtis Hall, Sophie Okonedo, Maxim Swinton, Chris Silcox, Chris Grabher, Oscar Nuñez, Todd Louiso and Tom Bower  Distributor: Apple+

Grade: C

Rodrigo García takes us on a trip to Quirkyville, here identified as Raleigh, Virginia, in “Raymond & Ray,” a dramedy about brotherhood and redemption that starts out interesting but grows progressively more irritating as it proceeds.

It begins with the sudden visit of Raymond (Ewan McGregor), a seemingly level-headed, low-key, vaguely dull guy, to his rougher, untidy brother Ray (Ethan Hawke) in his messy cabin.  He’s come to inform Ray that their nasty father Harris (Tom Bower), from whom both have long been estranged, has died, and that the old man requested them to come to his funeral.  Ray, a recovering addict who’s given up working as a jazz trumpeter, is reluctant to go, but Raymond pleads with him, explaining that he’s lost his driver’s license—the first sign that he’s fallen on difficult times both personally and professionally.

So they’re off, getting to know one another again on the road.  These sequences have a slightly offbeat quality, sort of like a watered-down Sam Shepard brother duet, but if they’re hardly exceptional they are elevated somewhat by the actors, who play off one another skillfully as they reveal facets of their past feelings and present personas.

After their arrival in Raleigh, however, everything descents into a quiet riot of eccentricity.  Harris’ voluble lawyer Mendez (Oscar Nuñez), who thinks his client was a great guy (like everybody  else, it seems) explains the specifics of the will—no inheritance to speak of, but the specification that Raymond and Ray are to personally dig the grave for the old man, who chose to be buried naked in a simple pine box.  They’re directed to the house where Harris lived—with sexy Lucia (Maribel Verdú), who was, it seems, more than just a landlady, and who has an energetic young son, Simon (Maxim Swinton).  At the sparsely-attended wake, they also meet Harris’ nurse Kiera (Sophie Okonedo), a soulful woman who bonded with him in his last days.

Things grow exponentially odder at the grave site, where the brothers dutifully grab axes and shovels in response to their dead father’s demand.  The old man’s unorthodox minister (Vondie Curtis-Hall) shows up to preside over the burial and offer a string of off-the-wall observations about the boys.  Simon comes with Lucia, requesting—much to the discomfort of the funeral director (Todd Louiso) that the coffin be opened so that he can see the body, since he was at school during the viewing.  And matters get really strange when a pair of twin acrobats (Chris Silcox and Chris Grabher) show up with a secret to reveal and routines to demonstrate.

Has all of this been stage-managed by the deceased (who briefly shows up in semi-spectral form, as well as in the flesh when the casket is opened) as a means of reconnecting with Raymond and Ray and helping them overcome what’s stalling their lives?  That’s never explicitly stated, but what happens would presumably have warmed the old man’s heart, if he had one (what’s said about his past life makes it doubtful).  Ray will take out his trumpet and play over the grave.  Moreover he and Kiera will go to a club after the burial, and he’ll nervously join in a jam session there.  Emotionally stunted Raymond will go him one better, choosing to remain, at least temporarily, with Lucia and Simon.

The cast is a fine.  Hawke and McGregor nail the dissimilar personalities of brothers trapped in a bewildering situation, and both Verdú and Okonedo manage to suggest some semblance of reality beneath characters that are little more than literary conveniences.  Hall’s extravagant gestures fit the caricature he’s asked to fill, and young Swinton has precociousness to spare.  But Silcox and Grabher can do little but display their physical moves and smile enigmatically.

The problem is García’s script never convinces us that this contrived tale conveys much about the human condition, and as it plunges more and more into absurdism, the clash with the naturalistic background provided by production designer David Crank and cinematographer Igor Jadue-Lillo becomes ever more grating.  Nor is the pacing helpful: García direction has little rhythm, and Michael Ruscio’s editing feels sluggish, as though struggling to suggest that something profound is being said when it isn’t, while Jeff Beal’s jazz-influenced score is an intriguing choice that turns out more intrusive than complementary.

“Raymond & Ray” is a road movies that, in the end, takes too many wrong turns.  

Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Sarah Harvey and Deborah Balderstone   Director: Ol Parker  Screenplay: Ol Parker and Daniel Pipski   Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Kaitlyn Dever, Billie Lourd, Maxime Bouttier, Lucas Bravo, Geneviève Lemon, Cintya Dharmayanti, Agung Pinda, Ilma Nurfauzia, Ifa Barry, Dorian Djoudi, Romy Poulier, Charles Allen, Francis McMahon, Sean Lynch and Arielle Carver-O’Neill   Distributor: Universal

Grade: C-

Here’s an old-fashioned romantic comedy that’s banking on star power that no longer carries the wattage it once did.  But one really can’t blame Julia Roberts and George Clooney for the fact that “Ticket to Paradise” is so godawful.  They’re willing to go to extraordinary lengths to pump some life into the material they’re given—one only need point to a sequence in which they go crazy wild after winning a ratcheted-up game of beer-pong to see how far.  (Lorne Balfe’s unexceptional score integrates a couple of pop songs to allow them to do some goofy dancing here.)  But it’s a hopeless task, given the weak script concocted by Ol Parker (the “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” movies) and newcomer Daniel Pipski and Parker’s direction, which ranges from limp and lackadaisical to desperate and overindulgent.

The premise is remarkably thin.  Long-divorced David and Georgia Cotton (Clooney and Roberts) had one child during their five years of marriage—daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who’s just graduating college.   (At least it seems to be college, despite the fact that they keep referring to her as a newly-minted lawyer, which would require a long stint in law school.)  Her parents snipe about one another endlessly, and the thought of attending the ceremony together fills them with dread.  When they find they’re seated beside one another, they immediately start bickering, which might be amusing if the reciprocal jibes weren’t so lame.

As a post-graduation break Lily and her loopy best friend Wren (Billie Lourd) go off on a trip to Bali, where they find themselves stranded mid-ocean after their tour boat goes off without them.  Luckily they’re found by handsome Gede (Maxime Bouttier), who takes them aboard his boat and back to shore.  Within a month Lily is engaged to the seaweed-farmer—a prospect that horrifies both David and Georgia, who fear that she’s repeating their mistake by marrying too hastily right after college and ruining her chance for lasting happiness.  So they fly to Bali for the traditional wedding ceremony, intending instead to sabotage the nuptials. 

Gede is on to what they’re up to as soon as they connive to steal the rings needed for the ceremony, but though supposedly a smart girl Lily remains blithely oblivious until she stumbles on the stolen jewelry late in the game.  Along the way there are all sorts of mirthless episodes: David gets attacked by a dolphin during a swim, he and Georgia get competitive while harvesting Gede’s seaweed, and, of course, after getting wasted in that beer-pong episode, they wind up in bed together just as Georgia’s boyfriend Paul (Lucas Bravo) unexpectedly shows up and they have to awkwardly conceal the accidental reawakening of the love they’ve always had.  In the end, of course, they give their blessing to the marriage and wind up back in each other’s arms, much to their—but not our—surprise. 

Clooney and Roberts are wasted in this claptrap, but they both gamely call up their old tricks—his cocky nod and snide delivery, her broad smile and pinch-nosed glare—but to little avail, since the situations are so dumb and the dialogue so drab.  Everyone else, including the Balinese supporting players (many of them fairly amateurish), is overshadowed by their movie-star presence.  Dever has one good line—at one moment when she’s acutely embarrassed by her parents, she expresses the wish that an asteroid would fall, a sentiment some viewers might embrace—but is otherwise nondescript, as is Bouttier, who spends most of the film standing around looking either puzzled or vaguely annoyed by his to-be in-laws’ shenanigans.  Lourd gets a few opportunities to do the usual best-friend snarkiness bits, and Geneviève Lemon tries to squeeze some chuckles out of a scene on an airplane when she’s sucked into David and George’s warfare (she reappears later on equally infertile comic ground).  But the person who unquestionably comes off worst is Bravo, so winning in “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” who must attempt a dreadful Inspector Clouseau stumblebum act as the hopelessly hopeful pilot who chooses to propose to Georgia at the worst possible times.  His slapstick reaction after a snakebite is truly grotesque, and not a little tasteless.

One can at least take some pleasures in the visuals.  The Balinese village setting of Owen Paterson’s production design is utterly unrealistic but good-looking, and Lizzy Gardiner’s local costumes are eye-catching, with everything caught in blazingly sunlit colors by cinematographer Ole Birkeland.  Editor Peter Lambert can’t do much about the lumpy, episodic nature of the narrative, but could have sharpened some of the individual sequences; the film runs long, especially since the bloopers and gags in the final credits appear to have amused the actors far more than they do us.                   

One might mention that though it’s set in Bali, the movie was shot in Australian locations mocked up to look like the island.  Financial incentives probably played a role, and the filmmakers try to compensate by reiterating how beautiful Bali is as often as they can, but whatever the reason, the change mirrors the sad reality that this is a poor imitation of fondly-remembered rom-coms past.  If you want to have a really good time in Paradise, skip this “Ticket to…” and search out Ernst Lubitsch’s “Trouble in…” instead.