Alexander
Payne’s The Descendants is all about
getting past the exterior; how things may not always be as they outwardly
appear. This extends even to the film’s Hawaiian setting, and how what most
deem to be “paradise” is actually far less glamorous once you live there for
your entire life. The Descendants is
focused less on the sun, ocean and beauty of Hawaii than it is focused on the
stuffy offices, hospital rooms and cloudy days. The people are no less
deceptive. When a character or a situation is introduced to us in the film, they
seem to be little more than stereotypes. Only later do we find out that this
first impression was misleading. This is the thesis of The Descendants, and it’s a captivating one. It’s unfortunate that
the film itself frequently forces certain developments and tries to spell
things out way too clearly. For proof, look no further than the first ten
minutes, which delivers the entirety of the exposition through cringe-inducing
voiceover. It gets mostly better from there, but The Descendants remains frustratingly uneven throughout. It has
several great moments, and it’s performed beautifully, but I’m not convinced
it’s a great movie.
George
Clooney stars as Matt King, a wealthy Hawaiian lawyer whose wife just went into
a coma after a devastating boating accident. Now he is left alone to care for
both his daughters—one young (Amara Miller) and one a teenager (Shailene
Woodley)—and tell all his wife’s loved ones the news that she may not make it
out alive. Matt is also the sole trustee of a large portion of Hawaiian land,
and he plans on selling it to a developer along with a large group of his
cousins. He spends the entire movie juggling his family, the hospital,
business, and sudden questions about his wife’s fidelity. Of course, the movie
is less about plot and more about living amongst the characters for a short
period of time. It has a Tom McCarthy-esque sense of place and character, and
on that level it is an unqualified success. The characters here are, more or
less, incredibly well-developed.
The Descendents is far less
successful at transporting the characters from one emotional beat to the next.
In that arena, the film frequently feels incredibly forced. It’s very easy to
buy who these people are and their relationships with one another, but their
behavior always seems like it is being determined by writers as opposed to the
way things actually would go. One of the most jarring instances comes toward
the end of the film’s second act, when Clooney decides to have a surprisingly
deep conversation with a certain other character that doesn’t feel like it
would actually ever happen. This second character is someone Clooney doesn’t
particularly trust or like, yet he’s suddenly opening up and asking him for
advice out of nowhere. It’s a small moment, but it’s little things like that
which most bugged me when watching The
Descendants. This is a movie where everything should feel effortless, but
too often things seemed predetermined by the laws of crowd-pleasing screenwriting.
None
of this is the fault of the actors, who give tremendous performances across the
board. Clooney will get the most press because he’s, well, George Clooney—and
he’s great—but the supporting work is what really ties it all together. Both
daughters are terrific (Woodley in particular is a revelation), Robert Forster
stops by and knocks it out of the park for a few scenes, and even Matthew
Lillard returns from the dead and does some nice work. Everyone just seems like
an actual human being, with all the fragility that suggests. They’re all
dealing with their own struggles, but they continue on with a façade of
happiness and resilience. Just as the Hawaii of The Descendants is anything but paradise, these people try to seem
composed and in control, but in reality may be falling apart at the seams.
These
performances, along with the mostly-impressive direction of Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways) do their best to
cover up the flaws in the film’s skeleton. The
Descendants looks and often feels like a great movie, and it has enough
moments that are superb, but there were just too many elements of the film’s
story that didn’t feel as natural as it should have. The script was written by
Payne along with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (Dean Pelton from Community) and it—like the movie itself—is a frustrating mix of
good and bad. For every intelligent and poignant scene in the film, there’s
another that fails to live up to potential. The
Descendants is quite good at balancing tragedy and humor without causing
tonal whiplash—it’s on par with 50/50
in that regard—but I just wish that the journey of the characters was given at
least one more re-write. Payne and his actors do an excellent job of creating
an utterly real Hawaiian environment with fleshed-out characters. The movie around
them isn’t quite as convincing.
Grade: B-
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