'Ticket to Paradise'’s Most Burning Question, Answered

Ticket to Paradise hits theaters today. It’s the latest big-screen team-up of mega-stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts, which finds them as the bitterest of exes reunited in gorgeous Bali to stop a quickie marriage on behalf of their formerly high-achieving, high-strung daughter (played by Kaitlyn Dever, who should probably tattoo something along the lines of “yes, I was cast as the offspring of Clooney and Roberts, what have you ever done?” on her forearm). It’s basically the Avengers of rom-coms, what could go wrong?

This movie has so many bright white teeth and charmingly crinkly smiles, not to mention an incredible snippet of a good-natured Midwesterner absolutely losing her mind at some rough air. The main question that Ticket to Paradise would like us to ask while watching is “will they or won’t they?” Any chance that Clooney and Roberts’s David and Georgia, super good-looking exes united in sabotaging their daughter’s goo-goo-eyed happiness, might reconnect? I mean, we’re not new here, right? We all know.

OK, there are a few other questions, like: why is Dever’s character repeatedly referred to as being a recent graduate of a four-year college and also set to “be a lawyer” at a “top firm” in Chicago before her Balinese about-face? Last I checked, law firms typically like their lawyers to go to law school, right? And how about Billie Lourd’s delightfully wobbly character, Dever’s character’s best friend and roommate who accompanies her on the post-grad island adventure— she certainly was not preparing for that white-shoe life.

But that’s not my biggest question, either. Namely: How the hell do I do the banana trick?

Let me explain. In one phase of David (Clooney) and Georgia’s (Roberts) plan, they scheme to steal the couple’s rings before their binding ceremony. Can’t get married if you don’t have the rings, right? Right. While the idea is David’s, he enlists Georgia to pull it off, flattering her with “you do the hard stuff.” In this case, the hard stuff is swiping the bands from the cousin who’s keeping track of them, an adorably doe-eyed kid who looks to be seven-ish years old. To do so, Georgia deploys the Banana Trick.

“Did you know that in America, we slice our bananas before we peel them?” she asks the gaggle of kids. Then she peels a banana to reveal that it is, yes, pre-sliced inside, using their distraction to swipe the rings from the kid’s little purse. Mission accomplished.

That is, if that mission is to make me wonder if Julia Roberts is a wizard and spend the rest of the movie waiting for the reveal of how I too can slice this banana and absolutely blow my pre-schooler’s mind. Alas, it isn’t explained in the movie, but thanks to the power of YouTube, you and I don’t have to wonder anymore. Simply poke a needle through the banana peel (but not all the way to the other side), use it like a little banana sword and sweep it back and forth. Lather, rinse, repeat, then low-key blow someone’s mind. Check it out in action below:

Now on to wondering whether Roberts’ character just carries needles around on all of her Balinese jaunts. Curiosity never sleeps (though bananas can help with that too).