@MovieJay's Review of The Descendants

With Sideways, About Schmidt, and now with The Descendants, Alexander Payne (also of Election fame) solidifies his place as the James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News) of our time -- a torch-carrying heavyweight of the modern dramedy that specializes in making you laugh and smile while leaving a lump in your throat all at the same time.

The Descendants, starring George Clooney in another amazing performance, focuses on the role of modern men and is another in a series of movies from Payne that have specialized in men taking stock of themselves. Here Clooney sheds the crisp suits, slick hair and shoeshines of Michael Clayton and Up In the Air and trades them for tropical shirts, sandals, and hair that needs to be cut like a week and a half ago and turns in a performance more physically resembling his dishevelled CIA agent in Syriana (though not as pudgy). He plays Matt King, a man whose lost touch with his family in what appears to coincide with him losing touch with the land he is from and the traditions it represents.

If Matt seems a square and an absentee father, than his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) is the yin to his yang -  a thrill-seeking, free-spirited type who opens the film in a boating misadventure that leaves her in a coma. On his side of the family, Matt's a descendant of one of the first white land-owning families in Hawaii and holds, by a slim majority, the controlling-share of a piece of untouched land on neighboring Kuaui Island that he is having to decide whether to sell to condo and resort developers.

If Matt has been taking care of his family's estate, it has been Elizabeth taking care of the rest of his family at home, including two daughters: the boarding-school teen Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and the younger Scottie (Amara Miller). Now that mom is in a coma, it forces Alexandra home from school where she must help with Scottie as dad both takes care of work as well as dealing with friends and extended family in a new reality where he must now lead his own family instead of losing time to caretaking his family's affairs.

Things get complicated when Alexandra reveals to him that mom was having an affair with local real estate agent Brian Speer, played by Matthew Lillard. Lillard is surprisingly effective in this role that announces him as a real man with no trace of the cartoonish and anxious young guy traits we have grown familiar with from the Scream and Scooby-Doo franchises.

Alexander Payne does a great job of continuing the tradition of his other intelligent, accessible Hollywood films. The idea of presenting us a story with a strong and complicated lead character surrounded by an equally strong supporting cast who are all given their moments behind the wheel is his staple and he delivers it in spades.. And like his other films, The Descendants feels uncannily like life from one true scene to the next where plot is secondary to character, allowing scenes to be as serious as they are light.

Consider Robert Forster here, as the handsome, grizzled, angry Mr. Thorson and father to Elizabeth. It's a testament to how great he is for this role that we sense so much beyond the words that are spoken in the very few scenes he's in. Mr. Thorson doesn't respect Matt, finds him weak, and in one agonizing scene when close family and friends are invited to say their goodbyes to Elizabeth (who has expressed in a living will her wish to be taken off of life support in such an instance), Thorson implies that had Matt been a better husband and stronger man that maybe she wouldn't have been seeking thrills out in the ocean and would still be with them today.

Other strong supporting roles include that of Beau Bridges as Cousin Hugh, an affable, well-liked, salt-of-the-earth sort to all that know him. Privately  he plays the foil to Matt, who is on the fence about selling their ancestral land. As I mentioned earlier, Matthew Lillard really brings it in a character that ought to be the bad guy instead of Cousin Hugh, but who we come to find a great deal of empathy with.

Come Oscar time, George Clooney will find himself with a best actor nod, without a doubt, however huge shout-outs belong to Shailene Woodley as the teen daughter who faces down the family crisis with a reserve of grace and strength that bode well for her as adulthood approaches. Also Robert Forster, who has one of the strongest supporting roles ever rendered with that little amount of screen time, (punctuated hilariously by a moment of comic-violence between him and Alexandra's whoa-dude-spaced-out pseudo-boyfriend Sid).

Based on the novel by the same title by Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants no doubt works as well as it does because of her years growing up in Hawaii, infused particularly in the characters of the two daughters in the film.

The Descendants is one of the best movies of the year above all for its performances (Sid even gets his moments of depth in there) but also in the strength of its screenplay, which does a tremendous job of fitting Elizabeth in a coma, the land deal, along with the Mr. Mom as well as the coming-of-age stuff all in one story and telling it as seamlessly as it does with charm, humor and depth.

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