Alexander Payne’s latest film paints three inter-linked stories onto a lush background of Hawaii’s leafy suburbs, beaches and awe-inspiringly beautiful coastal wilderness. The first involves the discovery by Matt King (George Clooney) that his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), who in a coma from a boating accident, had been having an affair. Elements of this story require that Clooney track down and decide whether to confront the man she was sleeping with. The second storyline focuses in on Clooney’s relationship with his two daughters, Alex (a superb Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller) to whom had grown distant. At the beginning it is not clear if Clooney really wants to reconnect with Alex and Scottie or just to get them to stop acting out (Alex is in a private boarding school for troubled teens and Scottie is heading in that direction). Both these two story lines benefit from the audience being told, very early on, that there will be no recovery from the coma; it is just a matter of time before life support is ended. This avoids obvious false hope and the possibility that Clooney will be able to (or even want to) confront his wife about the affair. The third story involves the pending sale of a piece of pristine wilderness that has been in the wider King family for generations. This is the most predictable part of the film, but it affords us an excuse to escape cramped interiors and see of  breathtaking parts of Kauai.
I haven’t quite decided how I feel about the film (hence the long introductory description). Normally, I react to heartwarming as the kiss of death for a film, but here there is a generosity to the film and to its characters that makes it sweet but not sickly so. Clooney plays Clooney here: the slight sideways jerk of the head and movement of the lips before the words come out; the look of bafflement; the slight play of a smile… it is all there. But sometimes, as here and in that astonishing final scene of Michael Clayton, it just works, and Clooney can douse the charisma, show frailty and become a canvas on which other people play out their conflicts, which he registers with bare flickers of emotion.
There are also a range of wonderful small performances, including Robert Foster as Elizabeth’s father, all grief, anger and resentment, and Beau Bridges as Cousin Hugh, old boy bonhomie masking a streak of self-interest. Certainly recommended, but I need more time to decide just how good it is.
I saw this at a press screening a couple of weeks ago. I was very fond of the film that evening (squeezed out a few more tears than Clooney’s apparent effort to do the same on screen) but my appreciation has dimmed with the passing days. It grows slighter and slighter. Although I’m not sure I am as confident as Dana Stevens over at Slate, but her review seems to reflect my responses. Stevens suggests the film sets the audience up “for exactly the kind of story Payne does best: road movies about less-than-heroic oddballs on quests that are at once transformative and essentially ridiculous. I was so excited to see what he’d do with this misfit crew once he rounded them up and sent them on their journey. But The Descendants squanders the comic energy of its opening act. Once the Kings get to Kauai, Payne seems content to sit back and watch as the family pads around the spectacular shoreline, alternately squabbling and bonding. Matt eventually has a brief, awkward encounter with the man who made him a cuckold, and also a meeting with his barfly cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges), who has his own plans for that chunk of family property. Amid all this desultory beachcombing, Matt learns hard lessons about his wife, his daughters, and himself—but they’re lessons any discerning viewer already saw coming a mile away.”
Robert Foster’s performance was probably the most memorable of the bunch.
I didn’t love the film, but that review, or that part of the review, just strikes me as more snarky than insightful.
watched it last night. dispiriting to think that the director who made election made this but it’s not bad in its middlebrow way. i can’t summon up enough energy to say very much more about it. clooney was good, i thought, robert forster was great, the kids were great, but the script was only occasionally unpredictable.