Review: The Descendants (2011)

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30, November 2011Reviews

As treacly family deathbed dramas go, The Descendants is remarkably predictable and not all that moving, searching so desperately for human truth that it ultimately rings artificial. I sat there watching great actors perform a by-the-numbers screenplay that thinks it’s far more virtuous and profound than it actually is, waiting to be struck by a stiff smack of truth that the story never finds. This is, very simply, a standard-order weepie with overstated introspection and lukewarm family drama.

I’m not sure what’s more shocking – that this tepid effort comes from a brilliant screenwriter like Alexander Payne, or that the critical community has so affectionately embraced its very mild charms. The Descendants has been a critical darling since its September debut at the Telluride Film Festival and has been one of the consensus Oscar front-runners ever since. But this is a thoroughly minor-key work that tells more than it shows and seems notably disconnected from both its characters and the audience. It also seems curiously opportunistic, like it is mounted not to tell a true and affecting story but rather to prey on the emotions of moviegoers who expect greatness from the likes of Alexander Payne and George Clooney. That effort is an apparent success; the film itself is absolutely not.

Typically, a Payne film is tenderhearted but razor-sharp, full of vicious satire and darker implications. The Descendants, however, is completely edgeless, curiously absent of suggestion and subtlety. It is narratively clunky and thematically earnest to a fault. Indeed, it is just about as neutered as Clooney’s character, Matt King, a Hawaii realtor whose wife has been rendered comatose in a Jet Ski accident. Matt is completely distraught over his wife’s critical condition despite being emotionally disconnected from her for years prior. He is also detached from his two daughters; the youngest, Scottie (Amara Miller), is a precocious and impressionable 10-year-old, and the eldest, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), is so aimless and defiant she was sent to a boarding school. Matt has been an absentee father and yearns to connect with his girls in the wake of his wife’s tragic accident. We know this because Matt tells us – in narration so thick and blatant that he sometimes literally tells us his moment-to-moment thoughts. The narration dwindles as the story progresses, but the film consistently paints a broad picture, even its silences overtly proclaiming what we’re supposed to feel rather than subtly drawing us in.

Such unrefined character strokes are especially startling considering that Payne’s last film, 2004’s Sideways, was beautifully evocative, suggesting tremendous emotional pain beneath its more overt and uproarious comedy. The Descendants wanders in a tonal no-man’s-land, explicitly stating its drearier emotions and barely registering on a comedic scale. We’re left with a very flimsy emo-drama that assumes its content is powerful enough to glide past shallow characterizations and obvious narrative arcs. Everything is on the surface, completely expected and utterly unsurprising.

The story hinges on the revelation – heavily promoted in the film’s marketing – that Matt’s wife was engaged in an affair leading up to her accident. Naturally, the news sends Matt into an emotional tailspin. He engages in a ham-fisted investigation to find his wife’s suitor, in an attempt to come to terms with her betrayal and somehow reconnect with his daughters. Clooney is good but not great in the role many have incorrectly labeled as his best. The fault doesn’t lie with Clooney himself; the material simply doesn’t allow for a great deal of nuance. As the rebellious older daughter, Woodley is truly great, but she too is limited within the confines of a screenplay so clueless in dealing with grief and family dynamics that we are frequently subjected to sequences where each character unburdens his/her emotions in soliloquies spoken aloud to the comatose mother. These scenes are awkward at best and downright silly at worst.

A subplot involving the lucrative sale of a precious family land plot for which Matt is the trustee is completely distracting and entirely unnecessary, unfolding in a graceless, convenient fashion that would be right at home in a ‘90s-era TV sitcom. This film is a direct antithesis to Clooney’s last major flirtation with Oscar, in Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which pulled the rug out from under traditional expectations at every turn and deepened its emotional impact as a result. By contrast, The Descendants seems an eerie narrative regression, back to when stories and characters could fit inside a tidy box to satisfy the lowest common denominator.

47/100 ~ Bad. The Descendants is an awkward and transparent grab for the emotions of unsuspecting audiences.

Jason McKiernan
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Awards Pundit & Senior Film Critic. I married into the cult of cinema at a very young age - I wasn't of legal marriage age, but I didn't care. It has taken advantage of me and abused me many times. Yet I stay in this marriage because I'm obsessed and consumed. Don't try to save me -- I'm too far gone.
  • Georgia Xanthopoulou

    http://www.unsungfilms.com, by Georgia Xanthopoulou
    George Clooney, the sea and sun of Hawaii, floral patterns. Still, this isn’t the part one would expect someone with Clooney’s star image would take on. All those who imagined a suntanned Clooney who frolics in Hawaiian waters with a love interest by his side to keep him warm, should go watch The Descendants with no such expectations. Clooney’s character is that of a man in a masculinity crisis, as he is found in a situation where his wife is in a coma and he has to learn how to be a father and a family man. Apart from coping with his two daughters who, in their turn, try to cope with their mother being in the hospital, he also has to make a big financial decision that will affect a huge Hawaiian community as well as track down and face the man his wife was cheating on him with.
    The film claims Hawaii is not paradise and people have real problems, like everyone else. And I’m sure they do. However, the film doesn’t opt for a serious, dramatic approach to the story but, rather, goes for a lighter, breezier attitude, one that fits perfectly with the entirely Hawaiian soundtrack. The story is simple and a bit kooky, as are the characters, in keeping with the tradition of not only director Alexander Payne’s previous films but also with the tradition of independently produced dramedies of recent years. After all, Alexander Payne rose to fame through independent productions. The film’s sad moments are moving and its funny ones come out of left field, as they should. The story turns out as you expect it to turn out, mostly, which is alright, because it’s not about what happens in the film, but about how everyday people handle some everyday and some not so everyday situations. The simplicity of the film allows for the actors’ performances to shine through and really do all the work, as it is expressiveness and timing in delivering lines that really benefit films like this one. And they do a good job.
    I must say it was very refreshing seeing George Clooney in a part that seems to bring out his quality as a comical but also a serious actor at the same time. The fact that Clooney spends an entire film being stunned and confused like a fish out of water was quite entertaining as well, since, usually, he portrays much more self-assured men who borderline on arrogant. And as much as the latter type of parts suit him, I ‘m going to go out on a limb and say that the former ones humanise him and strike connections with the audience at a much higher rate. Plus, from his cameo on Friends in 1995 to his role in The Men Who Stare at Goats in 2009, I would argue that funny suits him better than sarcastic. In The Descendants he delivers a nuanced performance which appeals to the audience not only because of its emotional depth but also because of the timing and expressions that make for good comedy. I feel it’s also quite telling of his abilities as a comical actor that Clooney is closer to getting an Oscar as a male lead than ever with this part than he was with any of his previous more ‘serious’ ones (like Michael Clayton). Shailene Woodley’s performance as Matt’s eldest daughter also stands out, and she is extremely convincing as the difficult, confused teenage daughter.
    Actors’ performances are The Descendants main asset. Ηowever, its spine is its script. As this is not a script based on thrill or shock or even a surprising ending, it’s all about the lines. While we ‘re dealing with the humorous moments or with the more emotional ones, lines are understated but to the point, there to appropriately highlight the tone of each scene. And while the story is not anything extremely original, it narrates the story of a man who learns not only how to be a better father but, also, a better person as he reevaluates his whole and goes through a journey in order to honor his heritage and foster his future. One generation receiving for the last one and caring for the ones to come. The one thing worrying is that his wife had to fall into a coma for him to realize what he needs to do in life… Not just sit him down and have a chat with him…

  • http://www.facebook.com/baronronan Baron Ronan Doyle

    Boom. Perfect review.