Matt needs to bond with his children, make peace with his wife and deal with the pesky politics of entitled cousins. It is about the fracturing and healing that take place within families. The emotional trajectory of “The Descendants” is familiar enough.
She has a troubled past, a bad attitude and a grudge against her mother that she refuses to relinquish in spite of Elizabeth’s condition.
The younger one, Scottie (Amara Miller), who is 10, is angry and confused, while her 17-year-old sister, Alex (Shailene Woodley), just seems angry. Matt, who describes himself as “the back-up parent, the understudy” is suddenly forced to manage his two difficult daughters. Clooney slips on a pair of boat shoes and runs, like an angry, flightless bird, to a neighbor’s house - and yet every moment of the movie feels utterly and unaffectedly true. There are times when you laugh or gasp in disbelief at what has just happened - an old man punches a teenager in the face a young girl utters an outrageous obscenity Mr. He somehow achieves the emotional impact of good melodrama and the hectic absurdity of classic farce without ever seeming to exaggerate.
Payne - immeasurably aided by a dazzlingly gifted, doggedly disciplined cast - nimbly sidesteps the sentimental traps that lurk within the film’s premise. The way Matt’s predicament plays out is surprising, moving and frequently very funny. Shortly after Elizabeth’s doctors inform Matt that he is about to become a widower, he learns that she has made him a cuckold. His wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), lies in an irreversible coma in a Honolulu hospital after a boating accident. This land deal is big news locally, but it is in some ways the least of Matt’s problems, a reminder of the burdens of an identity he both takes for granted and wishes he could shed. Matt, the trustee of this precious birthright, is in charge of selling it off to developers. This bloodline has devolved into a gaggle of pale loafers in loud shirts and sandals - Matt’s cousins - who own a pristine and picturesque tract of land on Kauai. His family tree stretches back to the earliest white settlers in Hawaii and includes indigenous royalty as well. Though he is a bit uncomfortable about admitting it (and though he tries to live a life of low-key, middle-class normalcy), Matt, a real estate lawyer, is as close to an aristocrat as it is possible for an American to be. His brief rant is buttressed by images of poverty and grime that are powerful but also slightly misleading, since Matt’s story is not - or at least not explicitly - one of deprivation or social inequality. In a voice-over at the beginning of “The Descendants,” Matt King (George Clooney) challenges the myth, endemic among mainlanders, that Hawaii, where he lives, is a paradise on earth.
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