Alexander Payne is back with another light but robust take on the male psyche with Geroge Clooney leading a cast including Beau Bridges and Judy Greer in The Descendants.
The long awaited directorial return of Alexander Payne sees Geroge Clooney play an emotionally neglectful father, living in the presumed paradise that is Hawaii. Usually comfortable behind a desk at his law practice, King finds himself desperately in need of reconnecting with his daughters when their mother is hospitalised after a boating accident. As he deals with his wife's declining health and his children's aggressive behaviour, he must simultaneously lead his cousins through a very lucrative sale of the land that has been in his family for 150 years.
In a mix of delicate contrasts and frank voiceovers courtesy of Clooney, Payne paints a picture of the virgin Hawaiian land as an unused emotional luxury. It forms the basis of a story King tells his kids so they can all - himself included - appreciate the history and the luck that brought wealth for the generations that came from one very well-to-do couple from the 1860s.
The Descendants is remarkable in its subtlety and humour and Payne steers clear of the gooey mess that King's journey back into fatherhood could so easily become. Instead, he shows us a rational but disconnected man - charming in his own obliging way, but strikingly flawed all the same. But The Descendants doesn't have the meaty roles or stellar acting that set the film world alight in the same way Sideways did.
Nonetheless, the laughs come thick and strong from ten year-old daughter Scottie, a feisty Amara Miller whose childhood is ebbing away faster than her father can handle. A slew of fantastically frank, often idiotic minor characters join the morbid fun and Clooney's dad-run is priceless.
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