Film Review: The Descendants (15) (From The Northern Echo)

Film Review: The Descendants (15)

4:36pm Wednesday 1st February 2012 in Reviews By Steve Pratt

HERE’S the film that will give George Clooney a best actor Oscar to stand beside his best supporting actor Academy Award (for political drama Syriana).

Click here to check showtimes for The Descendants

Playing a husband and father gives him the chance to be both serious and sympathetic.

Gorgeous George has competition in the good looks business – the green and lush Hawaiian islands that form the backdrop for The Descendants, writer-director Alexander Payne’s first film for seven years since Sideways.

The Kings are a family in crisis after wife and mother Liz is injured in a water-skiing accident, and lies in a vegetative state in a hospital bed.

Clooney’s husband Matthew gathers the family together – ten-year-old daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) and rebellious teenage daughter Alex (Shailene Woodley) – as doctors rule out recovery and advise switching off the life support machine. Not everyone in the family is happy. Alex had been rowing with her mother before the accident, while Matthew discovers Liz was having an affair with a real estate agent (Matthew Lillard).

This is by no means as gloomy as it sounds, although it’s hardly a rollicking comedy, more a considered reflection on life and death as the family take stock of their relationship with the unconscious woman.

Payne takes things slowly – too slowly some might feel – as this family drama plays out to a tearful finale.