As the "backup parent" to two teenage girls, Matt King (George Clooney) is utterly unprepared to take charge when his wife is put into a coma by a speedboat accident. But in Alexander Payne's adaptation of Kaui Hart Hemmings' novel, life has a way of handing things down whether you're ready for them or not.
As a Hawaiian who can trace his lineage back to Captain Cook, Matt is heir to a large parcel of undeveloped land which new laws require him to sell off, splitting the proceeds with a raft of first and second cousins bound by his decision. Not surprisingly, the cousins want him to sign with a prosperous developer keen to turn the idyllic cove into a major resort, but Matt balks at converting the site of precious family memories into tourist trap.
Although it's laced with understated humor, The Descendants is Payne's first "serious" film, which is more a matter of tone than thematic heft. Clooney's performance, which mixes grief with suppressed rage as a more complete picture of his comatose wife emerges, is almost entirely inward-focused, a study in slowly thawing withdrawal; it's a cousin to his turn in last year's The American, only without the art-house abstraction.
Payne uses more color in the margins, reserving the broadest strokes for Sid (Nick Krause), the surfer-dude companion of Matt's elder daughter. He's somehow both doughy and muscle-bound, an easygoing lunkhead who almost has to turn out to be more than he appears. Elsewhere, Payne casts successfully against type, with a uniquely subdued Matthew Lillard as a maneuvering real-estate agent and a sublime appearance by Judy Greer as his faithful but bewildered wife.
There's perhaps a bit too much self-conscious maturity to The Descendants; Payne's exploring new territory, but it also feels like he's holding himself back, attempting to evolve through repression. The film could have been livelier without straying too far from its commendable nuance.
