The Descendants

Grade: A-

There are two ways I thought about starting this review. One is about trying to make a poignant point; the other is about things that bother me about reviewing movies. The latter of whom nobody will care about, but I want to mention it because it bothers me. The point is that overall Alexander Payne’s The Descendants is a better movie than Attack the Block, yet I enjoyed Attack the Block more. This isn’t really a problem unless you write about movies and give them an accompanying grade. See I wanted badly to give The Descendants an A- but ultimately I felt like I couldn’t because that would be a better grade then Attack the Block and I didn’t like it more than Attack the Block. So I’m just going to say it’s a better movie, but not nearly as much fun. (ed. – After further consideration I decided to man up and give it an A-)

Okay now on to stuff other people might find interesting. My other point is that The Descendants opens an interesting discussion about how we can’t help but become our parents. We all try, in some way or another, to not become them but in the end we can’t help but end up like them in some way. Often it sucks. It sucks hard. This is mostly because we are too quick to notice how we are like them in the bad ways. We get plenty of great qualities from our parents but they often aren’t the ones that get the most discussion.

In The Descendants, two of the main characters George Clooney’s Matt King and Shailene Woodley’s Alexandra King are plagued by this. Matt is his father, who we are told was an honest and hard working man that while he was born wealthy believed in only using the money he directly earned and raising his children on “enough to do something, but not enough to do nothing.” This lifestyle has worked out for him pretty well. He has a good job that he admits he may work at a bit too much. A wife who while things haven’t been great he still very much loves. He has two daughters. He lives in Hawaii. He also has a giant chunk of land in his family’s name that has been entrusted in him that he plans to sell for a lot of money and split among his many relatives. Things aren’t perfect for Matt but they could be a whole lot worse.

Then all of a sudden they get a lot worse. It all starts when his wife, Elizabeth, gets in a bad boating accident. She hits her head pretty hard, putting her in a comma, and eventually leading to her death. After being told by the doctor that his wife will be passing away in a few days Matt decides to go and tell all of her friends and family to say their last words before she passes away. He starts by getting his teenage daughter Alexandra out of the boarding school she is attending. After showing up and finding her drunk he takes her home to tell her the bad news about her mother. She of course reacts like any teen who hates their parent because they are so much alike. She’s mad and sad and in the course of this she tells father that she caught mom cheating on him.

This, we find out, is why she was really sent away. Matt never knew this because he is as he calls it “the backup parent.” Alexandra and her mother fought constantly as is often the case when two people with as strong of personalities as they both have (because they are the same person) are stuck in confinement with each other long enough. Then Alex saw her mom with another man and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The great thing about Alex, and supposedly her mom, is that this is an extremely realistic character and her actions are spot on. She hates her mom for making her like her and for doing something wrong to her dad who she views as being completely innocent. People like Alex love to grandstand when someone else like them does something bad. Never mind the fact that she herself does wrong things all the time and expects no repercussions. Someone else did wrong and they must be punished. You’re lying to yourself if you don’t know someone like that; well either that or that person is you.

Matt, who is naturally a passive man, takes this news hard and instantly goes on a middle aged tirade looking for the man. Matt is mad and he wants to do something to this man, who he finds out is named Brain Speer (played by Matthew lillard). Matt in an effort to track down Brian is lead to another island in Hawaii where he finally gets a chance to confront Brian. The interesting thing though is that through his travels Matt remembers who he is. Matt is a good man who does the right thing, like his father. So rather than confront Brian to try and fight him, he decides that he owes it to his dying wife to give Brian a chance to say goodbye. Matt wants to be the hard ass who makes Brian hurt as much as he has been hurt, but ultimately that’s not who he is.

The rest I will let you see for yourself, but as I said things basically all go to hell for Matt and the rest of the movie is him figuring out how to put things back into place. There is another side plot about him trying to sell the land. It’s interesting and is the main thing about the movie that is special to a story told in Hawaii as everyone is pushing for Matt to sell the property to a local buyer even if he won’t make as much money in the deal. Hawaii also plays a large role in the movie not just as the backdrop of the story but for interesting moments that make the movie memorable. Like when Matt is in an important meeting with a bunch of his family members about the land and everyone is dressed basically like it’s casual Friday so he says in voice over “don't be fooled by appearances. In Hawaii, some of the most powerful people look like bums and stuntmen.” Or his opening scene narration where he exclaims his distaste for living in Hawaii by saying “Paradise? Paradise can go fuck itself.”

Through this the director, Alexander Payne, does a really nice job of accustoming himself to his movies. I mean this in the sense that the views and overall approach to shooting a movie in Hawaii seem realistic to Hawaii. Part of this was probably thanks in large part to the writer of the book Kaui Hart Hemmings being around the set (she plays a cameo role in the movie too), but still you get a sense that Hawaii isn’t just a location but a character in this movie and an accurate one at that. Much like how in The Town you get such a feel for living in that part of Boston that Boston becomes more or less a real character in the movie. I’ve only ever seen one other Payne movie (Sideways) and while I didn’t care for it he definitely gave you the feeling of what it is like to go across the California visiting vineyards.

This movie is also well acted. Clooney does a great job of not being Mr. Handsome and instead playing a regular Joe who it’s believable that he would be cheated on. I’d imagine it’s hard for someone as suave as Clooney to play a man so angry and unassuming, so he did a great job. The anguish when Matt is being told by his step father about how he should have done more for his wife because he doesn’t know she was unfaithful is palpable, and Clooney helps to bring that. Shailene Woodley was also quite impressive. If you have ever seen The Secret Life of the American Teenager I feel sorry for you, and I’m also assuming you didn’t think she had a performance like this in her. Sure she is still playing pouty but this character was much more nuanced and fully formed and a lot of that could have been lost with a lesser actor. In the similar vein, Matthew Lillard doesn’t have a huge part but he is good in what he is in. Going toe to toe with Clooney in the scene he does is no easy feat but he was up to the task. It seems like maybe he has done some growing up since his Scooby Doo days.

I feel like I also have to mention the character Sid at some point in this review as he is the films comic relief. He’s a lovable idiot who Matt can’t stand but Alex keeps around because she needs someone her own age to help her mourn. At first he seems unnecessary and cliché, but as the movie progresses he grows on you and you see his value. Not just as a character but as a person. As a whole The Descendants is sort of like that. At first you think something is just there to happen as part of the story and then it becomes the story. In this way you can definitely tell it was a book first. It doesn’t have a bunch of ups and down and doesn’t really have much of an ending, but by the end of it you have been told a story worth telling. And well told at that.