Alexander Payne's 'The Descendants'

[The Trainman]

It's been a while since Payne has directed anything but it's good to see that something new from him is surfacing this year. Has it really been seven years since Sideways was released? Jeez, I'm getting old.

Anyway, the film stars George Clooney and the trailer just got posted a few hours ago. Looks really interesting. Touchy, funny, all that wonderful stuff.

Here's the synopsis:

From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning SIDEWAYS, set in Hawaii, THE DESCENDANTS is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family's land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8H3BiIPww

What do you guys think?

 

[MadVillainy]

Looks decent

 

[Drz]

the Descendants review

It has been a great pleasure to watch 2 really good George Clooney movies in such a short time. 1st the movie he co-starred, directed and co-wrote the Ides of March, now a family comedy-drama directed by Alexander Payne.

The movie deals about a family dealing with the Mother Elizabeth going into comatose and the inevitable death she is going to face, the family’s man/father is Matt King (played by George Clooney) and the protagonist of the film, but the way the film is played and the spotlight given, I’d say the father and his two daughters are protagonist all together. 10-year Old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year Old Alex (Shailene Woodley) are the daughters, Scottie being an artistic adventurous foul mouth kiddo with Alex being the drunken pot smoker who has a thing for older men. Matt has always been the back-up parent and now he has to deal with trying to raise them all by himself.

Now what intervenes and molds part of the main plot with the family having to deal with Elizabeth’s death is also that she cheated behind Matt’s back and Matt feels he must see this cheater and learn why Elizabeth would be a backstabber to her husband and children. So Matt has to deal with this, his daughters and informing about Elizabeth’s ensured death and her inevitable funeral to their loved ones. This is Matt King’s personal hell on the paradise Hawaii.

“My friends think that just because we live in Hawaii, we live in paradise. We’re all just out here sipping Mai Tai’s, shaking our hips and catching waves. Are they insane? Do they think we’re immune to life? How can they possibly think our families are less screwed up? Our heartaches, less painful?” is a quote that actually opens the movie, but it’s the perfect way for me to talk about the other star of the movie: Hawaii itself. Just like what Peter Jackson did to New Zealand with his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Alexander Payne manages to show how utterly beautiful Hawaii can be, but at the same time showing how much the same it is, how dirty it can be and how dark and grey if the peoples’ moods are down. I really liked the quote and I paid a lot of attention to the scenery and greatly enjoyed how much of Hawaii I got to see. The film is also filled with Hawaiian music, which I felt was a good choice to add up for the sceneries.

What I really loved about the movie was that it had really unique and different characters, the supporting characters we’re good, and all the main characters and their supporting characters got developed during the course of the movie and life went on. They all learn something from this experience and come off as smarter and better people with new values, it uplifts them and it uplifts the audience. I just really loved how George Clooney gets to do these incredibly serious movies with 10 year old daughters swearing, family crises and dealing with serious subjects like death in a family.

So without a further doubt, I warmly recommend this movie to everyone. It’s really good.

 

[echostation]

this movie is good but nothing great... Alexander Payne to me is pretty vastly overrated and I found sideways to be boring and indulgent as hell.

 

[RoboAmish]

I really liked it. It's low key, sure, but its a well made, well acted drama with a lot of heart. (Though I went through a similar scenario with my father so that may have made the film more "personal" to me)

Clooney is excellent too.