The Descendents

Before I review this really good film, I need to get something off my chest. Have you seen the TV adds for "The Descendents"? OK, what kind of film did you think this was? Kind of whimsical? A quirky family comedy? That's where I went. The trailer leads us to believe that this is a cute comedy featuring George Clooney's patented dry delivery. Fraud!!! Bullshit marketing fraud!! This is a serious pet peeve of mine, especially because this is a really terrific film. It simply isn't funny----at all. A minor chuckle once or twice maybe, but this film is being marketed as a comedy simply because the filmmakers don't trust their own work. It's ridiculous, it's a lie and it's still an excellent film. Shame on their greedy, lying asses. There, I feel better.
Ok, now for the film. Writer/director Alexander Payne specializes in normal shlubs in crisis. In his "Sideways" Paul Giamatti was the normal shlub. Jack Nicholson was the shlub du jour in "About Schmidt". In "The Descendents" George Clooney picks up that mantle. Hard to make George Clooney shlubby you say? Not really. Clooney is almost as good in the acting department as he is in the good looks department. In fact a couple of times he looks shlubby indeed, almost paunchy.
He plays a real estate lawyer who has been for many years an absentee husband and father. Now his wife has had a tragic accident and is on life support, leaving him to deal with two daughters who are completely alien to him. Since the accident, his ten year old is acting out. The seventeen-year-old is angry and uncontrollable. Clooney must go through a crash course in coping with young women without the benefit of his wife.
Eventually Clooney and his eldest daughter (played beautifully with just the right highlights of anger by Shailene Woodley) form an uneasy alliance thanks to a common enemy and the film becomes about their journey toward understanding in the midst of tragedy.
The film is framed by a subplot involving the sale of a parcel of land that has been passed down to Clooney and a bevy of laid back Hawaiian cousins, all of whom are descendents of Hawaiian Royalty with liberal amounts of Anglo/Howly blood. The land is pristine and amazingly beautiful and worth like a half a billion (with a B) dollars. Hawaii becomes another character in the film and Payne perfectly captures the Island zeitgeist. I've only been to Hawaii once but it really was just like this film portrays. And beautiful....well, I don't have time or space to capture the beauty of Hawaii in my little blog. I wish I did.
"The Descendents" is understated and poetic and great to look at and interesting and sometimes even adventurous. The acting is admirable, the writing and directing insightful and honest. It's just not really funny. So accept for those morons in marketing, job well done everyone. Seek this wonderful film out.