It was Christ­mas Day. We were in Orlando and decided to start a tra­di­tion of going to see a movie. At break­fast, we went around the table and asked every­one what would be their first choice. [pullquote]Julie and I chose Mis­sion Impos­si­ble as we thought that our sons would want to see that one; how­ever, sur­pris­ingly Josiah and Micah wanted to see The Descen­dants.[/pullquote] Julie and I chose Mis­sion Impos­si­ble as we thought that our sons would want to see that one; how­ever, sur­pris­ingly Josiah and Micah wanted to see The Descen­dants. I was good with that; I wanted to see it as well so we aimed for the 1:45pm show­ing. I was look­ing for­ward to see­ing Alexan­der Payne’s lat­est as I had seen his other films, like Side­ways and About Schmidt, which were well-done.

As the movie reached about thirty min­utes in I knew two things:

• It would be the dar­ling film of Hol­ly­wood and be in seri­ous con­tention for the Golden Globe and Oscar (come on, it has Payne direct­ing, Clooney in the lead, and inte­grated into the story line is a pro-environment theme);
• How­ever, it was just a good film, but not a great one, and should not receive all of the adu­la­tion in Jan­u­ary that it was going to receive.

As the film ended and we dis­cussed it dri­ving home, I more and more under­stood why I wasn’t thrilled with it.

Point one. Even though it was the writer and director’s inten­tion, you couldn’t really sym­pa­thize with any of the char­ac­ters.  [pullquote]Point one. Even though it was the writer and director’s inten­tion, you couldn’t really sym­pa­thize with any of the characters.[/pullquote] They are the typ­i­cal upper-middle class priv­i­leged that have made a total mess of their lives and they don’t seem to have really changed much at all by the end of the film. I just couldn’t get vested in the lives of the char­ac­ters on the screen.

I was shak­ing my head with that final scene when it showed Matt (played by George Clooney) and his daugh­ters munch­ing on pop­corn while watch­ing a movie. The final premise and inten­tion of the film—now every­thing is going to be all right. What would have been a bet­ter end­ing? With that same voice over, watch­ing Matt and his daugh­ters dis­cussing things in a coun­sel­ing ses­sion with one another, dig­ging at all of the prob­lems between them.

The movie just ended way too sim­ply and unre­al­is­ti­cally for me. With the amount of bit­ter­ness that was in that fam­ily, sim­ply hav­ing your wife/mom die does not solve any of the prob­lems that have been fes­ter­ing for six­teen years. This is the great prob­lem with many Amer­i­can films, often­times, they explain away trou­bling issues way too easily.

Point two. With some of the minor char­ac­ters, the act­ing was sim­ply bad and the writ­ing sketchy. This was some­thing pointed out to me by my sev­en­teen year old son, who actu­ally loved the movie.

Which were the scenes that come to mind? First, the scene in which Matt learns of the extra-marital affair of his wife from his brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Here, the writ­ers took a very del­i­cate sub­ject and the actors over-acted the scene. You couldn’t tell if they were going to try to make the scene funny or seri­ous. The other scene which caught me off guard was the one in which Julie Speer is con­fronting and yelling at the comatose Eliz­a­beth (this isn’t giv­ing any­thing away, but if you haven’t seen the film, Eliz­a­beth had an affair with Julie’s hus­band). Granted that’s a hard scene to por­tray, but the actress Judy Greer did not do it jus­tice. The scene fell flat and in the scene, I was glad Clooney’s char­ac­ter ended it fairly quickly.

[pullquote]A movie that should win the Golden Globe or Oscar should be flaw­less. The writ­ing, the direct­ing, the act­ing should all be impeccable.[/pullquote]A movie that should win the Golden Globe or Oscar should be flaw­less. The writ­ing, the direct­ing, the act­ing should all be impec­ca­ble. The Descen­dants was not that movie—it was a decent film, but it was not a great one. If you want to see a movie with a sim­i­lar theme (i.e., bro­ken char­ac­ters try­ing to repair their lives) go see Amer­i­can Beauty or The Eng­lish Patient, or the for­eign films such as Burnt by the Sun or The Bar­bar­ian Inva­sions). These films did win the Oscar and were wor­thy of that award. With regard to the film, there was one exem­plary fea­ture to it. George Clooney put forth an amaz­ing per­for­mance and I was glad that he won a Golden Globe. How­ever, for the film, it should have been over­looked and the award should have gone to a more wor­thy film. I hope those who deter­mine the Oscar don’t make the same mistake.

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