The Descendants (2011)

I love this movie so much

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Matt (Clooney)'s a wealthy, hardworking, but out-of-touch with his family's 'feelings' and 'challenges,' Dad has to suddenly wake up and reassemble his life when his thrill-seeking wife suffers a traumatic head injury; her ultimate recovery uncertain. His teen and pre-teen daughters are almost unfamiliar, though not hostile, to him, and he must find a way to connect in this crisis. All this is set in both the bustling urban and unspoiled Hawaii - and to further complicate matters, As executor of an estate including a huge and gorgeous swath of virgin Hawaiian seashore granted to his great great great grandparents by the King, from whom his family is descended, Matt has an imminent deadline to reluctantly sell the property to developers. Oh, he also finds his wife hid secrets that suddenly arise, as well. Clooney is well-suited to this role. He's charming, noble, ethical, a bit in denial and has some issues with empathy and affection, but is a good guy we can all admire and with whom we can sympathize. To me, a standout in a supporting role, was young Nick Krause, who plays a 'surfer dude-type' friend of Matt's teenage daughter, alternately riling the adults and offering gems of authentic teen wisdom and support that oft times steal scenes from the other cast members. He was a joy. While I appreciate the nod to Hawaiian heritage and the references to island history and culture, I do wish the Hawaiian music, which plays almost continuously, would have been less ubiquitous. It becomes distracting at times. A great film all-around. Worth a look. I bought the dvd and love it more each viewing.

Payne's pathetic leading men tell the stories of backstage stars, the forgotten roles, the lives outside of the limelight. They're visibly and mentally past their prime, although they're not always happy to admit the fact. How does Clooney's Matt King fit in with this echelon of middle-aged men yet to come of age? He's too good looking, for one. Did I say leading men? Payne's muses are more like character actors that aspire to be leads; the sidekick from Sideways is actually a former heart-throb gone to seed, who relies on the odd woman to notice his fading good looks and small claim to fame. Clooney, on the other hand, has only ripened with age, still the gold standard for a Hollywood sex symbol. He might not be up to it physically (and the film makes light of this in a painful jog slash speedwalk), but in spite of his opening monologue (which should be laced with bitterness but ends up more satisfied), Matt King seems to have it all. Why have the monologue, anyway? Payne's always been a great director of actors, and although the technique's been used to good effect before (Nicholson's entire series of letters in About Schmidt is a revelation in slow growing humility), these men have always told more through body language and action. I guess Clooney doesn't have the same gravitas of a Nicholson or a Giamatti, who channel their mid or late life crisis through physical decay and a panicked realisation at what they haven't achieved. Clooney may run funny, but he's too casually dashing to convincingly portray someone at odds with his entire family, much less someone work obsessed and liable to be cheated on. His persona made much more sense in Up in the Air, an incentive-driven, one man crusade set to disprove the 'no man is an island' mantra, so focused on a single number he eventually begins to doubt himself. In many ways The Descendants is Payne's weakest film to date, a clunky mishmash of Payne's better marks, like the sharp edge of a comic satire in Election, and the dissection of red-faced protagonists who splutter and stumble their way to an eventual understanding of their flaws and features. There's so much secondhand embarrassment in the desperate appeals of his earlier characters for lost glory; their lives are mishap after mishap, and after a while they're not sure whether to laugh or collapse into a miserable heap. The Descendants, by contrast, seems rather embarrassed of these characters' downfalls, not content to allow scenes to simply wallow in their melancholy. It's dripping in bathos; almost every moment of sentimentality has to be livened or 'saved' by comic relief. The most annoying intrusion is Sid, the inappropriately-stoned boyfriend walking straight out of a raunchy comedy, with the tact of a whooping megaphone. When Judy Greer forgives Elizabeth in a tearful eulogy near the end, Matt is visibly embarrassed by this show of emotion; he's the deceased's husband and yet hasn't cried this much over the whole affair. But his quick move to usher the hysterical woman out of the hospital room is flippant enough that the moment is more comedic than introspective. Payne doesn't hang Matt out to dry as much as his other protagonists, perhaps because his unique situation is an ethical dilemma for the ages. The entire movie is a painful journey for closure that may never be found; how exactly do you extract answers from a soon-to-be corpse, much less hurl angry abuse that will forever fall on deaf ears? Matt finds strength in having to replace Elizabeth's role as the available parent, and in his journey goes from someone whose dialogue is written like a babysitter's, to someone who finally finds common ground with his family and heritage. How it all goes down is a little hokey - that precious, delicate ceremony where they spread her ashes at sea - but then Payne finishes with one of the most startlingly realised endings of his oeuvre, depicting a family that hasn't quite gotten over what they've been through, but has survived and will continue to do so together.

So George Clooney plays a husband who hasn't paid attention to his family in years, so far that he states he hasn't taken care of his own daughter alone since she was 3. Of course he sees the errors of his ways only after his wife is in a terrible accident and ends up in a coma, from which she is not going to wake up.But then, surprise, he finds out she had a lover and man, why would she do that? I mean he has been an absent, distant, constantly working partner, how dare his wife find someone else who pays attention to her! (btw, sarcasm) Now his quest becomes to find this man, I mean he could take care of his children, figure out how to be a father, say goodbye to his wife, but no, he is gonna find his wife's lover. There is also a bit of plot about a land selling deal and George Clooney's character standing up to his family (cousins?) and not selling, the land, i don't know why that was in there.Also Scotty: was he supposed to the comedic relief? Was he supposed to be funny? Why is he there?

I really liked Payne's previous movies and this one came very close to being another great, male-character-study, drama and light comedy. It's about a man who finds himself faced with a handful of life-changing crises all at once, all of them connected. His estranged wife is in a coma and may die, he suddenly finds himself forced to develop a relationship with his two difficult daughters, he discovers there has been an affair, and the paradise land he has been entrusted with has to be sold off to commercial interests.I liked most of it a lot, except for how the plot threads are tied up, most of them fading away or ending on very weak notes. Which means that this movie screams potential and is enjoyable for most of the time, then ends with a whimper.*big spoilers warning*His relationship with his daughters is the best thing in the movie, serving also the comedy and heart of the movie, with a quiet and satisfying ending.But the main plot thread about Matt is highly confused and petty. The reason for not selling the land is obviously not about saving it from commercial development like he pretends, but about getting revenge against the guy for sleeping with his wife so that he won't get the commissions. He makes a big deal about an ideal of keeping the land untainted, which never bothered him before until he found out the commissions would go to this guy. So he screws over a few dozen people just to get revenge on one. Turns out he is both petty and hypocritical. Somehow everyone seems to have missed this.His roller-coaster emotions about his wife and her affair are good for a while, but end very hollow with an unrealistically loving and forgiving speech after all that he found out about her, especially given his estrangement until then.Oh, and I found the Hawaiian elevator-music soundtrack annoying.And the secondary plot threads? Sid is an incredibly insensitive mildly amusing jerk at first, then suddenly stops being a jerk and tells a sob story. Hardly good character development there. Elizabeth's father blames everyone except his daughter and is horrible to everyone, except he cries for his daughter so we are supposed to feel sorry for him. Speer's wife has a good role with a complex ending when she comes to the hospital and her grand gesture turns into a rant. So her character does well. But, like I said, the main plot threads of the land and Matt's search to find the man who turned him into a cuckold both end on a really petty note. What a waste of a good movie.