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The Descendants – Art 1/5 Ent 3/5 Worth 4/5
It’s hard to dislike The Descendants, but it’s certainly hard to think highly of a film whose entire appeal and originality revolves around the location. Ah, what the hell, Hawai’i is beautiful, and the light hearted story with a heavy hearted subject comes through in the end. There’s nothing brilliant about this movie, but that’s only an indictment if you’re craving brilliance or strapped for time. The writing is adequately witty and perceptive in a very human drama. It didn’t aim to slug anything out of the park, and well, it didn’t. The portrayal of the 21st century emasculated and ineffectual American father in a moment of worst case scenario crisis (for the suburbs) may be plowed soil but not necessarily overworked just yet. Alexander Payne (Sideways, About Schmidt) has let his lack of ambition color an unambitious but clean and enjoyable film.
Infidelity and dignity are the two central themes in this film, with inadequacy connecting them, and they’re given different treatment than we’re used to. Watching the second episode of Californication’s sixth season (holy shit, six seasons already that show’s been on the air?) was serendipitous because of a shared collapse of dignity in absentee fathers. David Duchovny sees his daughter’s inappropriately forward and smooth boyfriend schmoozing with some other ladies, and yet he can’t beat the shit out of him because he has to let his daughter make her own mistakes. In The Descendants, we’re given a more sympathetic variation on the dipshit boyfriend, and he does in fact get his stupid face punched, but all the same, George Clooney is forced to deal with this oblivious, ignorant sack of shit. Someone not worthy of shining his shoes yet he’s putting his dong up in the light of his life, and there’s nothing he can do about it. The majority of the story, however, is about his nearly deceased wife, whom we’re reminded throughout the picture was a free and untamed spirit, ready to leave Clooney in the dust of his stuffy law office while she experiences life to its fullest without him as a weight upon it. We started with this deep fear of inadequacy nearly 30 centuries ago with The Odyssey. Oh how we’ve evolved.
George Clooney … I don’t really know about him. He’s smart enough not to get himself into too many stupid roles, and he’s definitely got the finesse to play it cool when he’s in over his head, like in the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou (…speaking of the Odyssey). But he’s not the sort of actor that really kills it, though he couldn’t be accused of seeking those sort of roles either. In what he’s given here, and with what he can offer, I think he does just fine. Worthy of a bunch of awards? They dole out those pieces of shit to just anybody these days, might as well be to someone who at least tried for something that was out of his comfort zone, distinctive from the rest of his career and certainly requiring of more emotional vulnerability. Shailene Woodley was pretty damn decent in this, in an Elizabeth McGovern in Ordinary People kind of way: some potential there. A 2042 remake of Downton Abbey perhaps. Matthew Lillard – he should be doing LSD in Utah, chasing ghosts and hacking the planet still, what the fuck’s he doing in a normal movie?
