Descending Into Mediocrity

Alexander Payne has made his living delivering characters that are nuanced and real, even when they behave a bit out of the ordinary. "Sideways" is probably where it worked best. In "The Descendants", Payne stretches credibility a little bit too far. More importantly, this time he keeps the audience on the outside looking in. In his other films, you could usually identify with one of the players or at least imagine what it might be like to be them. Here we are relegated to being spectators, never once causing us to feel an emotion towards any of them. Even worse, the wit displayed in his better films is cruelly missing here. A couple of the scenes designed to make me laugh made me chuckle more out of embarrassment than anything else.

Matt King (George Clooney) is a lawyer living in Hawaii. His wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) is an outgoing, vivacious thrill-seeker. At least we are told that. We don't get to see it. In the first scene she suffers an accident on the water and is thrown into a coma. That concludes Ms. Hastie's acting job unless you count being unconscious in a hospital bed.

Matt's job is to get Alexandre (Shailene Woodley), his teenage daughter, from her boarding school and bring her home to Scottie (Amara Miller), her little sister. Alexandre is a spoiled brat who has her own agenda towards both her father and mother. It is quickly revealed why she harbors those ill feelings.

The side story concerns a parcel of land in Hawaii that is enormous and spectacularly beautiful. Matt is in charge of the disposition of the land, with a bunch of cousins offering their advice on how best turn the ground into cash. The way the disposal of the property is tied into a personal issue of Matt's feels insanely contrived.

"The Descendants" features beautiful scenery, nice looking people, and not much else. What is no doubt supposed to be a restrained and realistic representation of a family faced with life-and-death decisions, is instead a cold and unrealistic reaction to important issues. By having his players show virtually no reaction to bad news in the hopes of avoiding a maudlin cry-fest, Payne takes it too far in the other direction. We don't get upset; we don't care.

We are to believe that this damaged family will now somehow become functional because they have grown. Not a chance. Maybe their descendants will eventually figure it all out.