Directed by Alexander Payne. Starring George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Judy Greer, Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Robert Forster 15A cert, general release, 115 min
Despite an overly schematic script, The Descendants is a moving family drama, writes TARA BRADY
CAN UNDERWHELMING be a good thing? Alexander Payne certainly seems to think so. It's been almost a decade since the writer-director delivered Sideways, but if he's unduly excited about his return to feature film-making there's little trace of it in the studied deadpan of The Descendants.
George Clooney, the film’s star and linchpin, adds to the dramedy with a goofy walk and cuckolded stupor as Matt King, a Honolulu- based lawyer facing down a heap of woes. A workaholic and self-confessed “back-up parent”, Matt is lost when a boating accident leaves his wife in a coma. How will he tell his troubled 10-year-old, Scottie (Amara Miller), that mom won’t be coming back? And can he keep tearaway teen daughter Alex (Shailene Woodley) and her dimwitted boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause) in check?
Meanwhile, Matt has the entire extended clan to contend with. As the sole trustee of a family trust that comes with 25,000 acres of prime Kaua’i real estate, our hero is in a position to turn himself and his cousins into multi-millionaires. He, however, has always preferred a quiet life and hard work to cashing in on the family legacy.
If anything, Matt is too quiet: Alex lets slip that nearly departed mom had a boyfriend, a bombshell that inspires a bizarre family vacation in search of the Other Man (Matthew Lillard, excellent).
Clooney's passive suffering couldn't be further from Paul Giamatti's embittered trainwreck in Sideways. The Descendantsis most definitely an Alexander Payne joint, though it is charming and Zen-like where Sidewaysand Citizen Ruthwere spitting and funny.
There is, if you pick at it for long enough, something overly schematic about the narrative diptych and its insistence on foregrounding ancestry and familial duties. Arch double meanings abound in the dialogue – is Matt talking about work or his wife? – and more than one scene feels unfinished without a yuk-yuk sound effect. There’s also a good deal of conscious crowd pleasing in a character study that could double as a George Clooney primer: ooh, here he’s cartoonish; aah, now he’s crumpled again.
The lush setting (look, it's George in cargo pants!) and carefully plotted emotional pyrotechnics ought to persuade us that we've been had. And yet they don't. If The Descendantslacks the bite of Payne's other films, it still packs a wicked, classy punch. Anyone who fails to be moved by Robert Forster's riled, broken-hearted father-in-law gets a plaque mounted on the nearest wall. A final footnote played under rolling credits is a splendid tragicomic zinger.
Let’s not leave us hanging so long next time, Mr Payne.
