There is so much wrong with The Descendants, I hardly know where to begin except to say that the proportion of people lauding the film is downright frightening—perhaps the most frightening aspect of all. Once in my life have I exited a film early, and that was way back in 1492 when I was a teenager. If leaving the theatre tonight had not meant having to lug my popcorn and large Pepsi on a sore foot up the long, dark aisle, I might have legitimately escaped any time after the first minute or two when George Clooney began his monotone voice-over. I knew then that something about this film was dreadfully wrong.
Clearly, the writer/s of this mess, Kaui Hart Hemmings—to be fair, she wrote the novel, and a novel is often notably divergent from its screenplay, a screenplay that, in this instance, was written by Alexander Payne—how is this possible?—Nat Faxon and Jim Rash—have either never lost anyone they deeply loved or have never really felt that loss in any but a detached, Hollywood way.
How pat, then, to attempt to write in (so-called) humour, none of it dark enough (their circumstances and lack of emotional range hardly allow for that) to resonate for those of us who understand dark, and none of it attached enough to affect the gigglers in the audience, who would much rather laugh than feel anything—most especially, what a pile of drek this film is.
While the Hawaiian backdrop is lush and captivating, the absence of emotional through-line is underscored by the clunky vignettes where what ought to be (what is actually deemed) real feeling is replaced by inanely comedic moments—George Clooney running off through the neighbourhood...no, I cannot say it; I will be accused of homophobia (especially by the people who thought this was a good movie); a ranting grand/father who launches into a protective familial tirade that is so poorly acted I lost popcorn, the small white kernels falling from my gaping mouth; father and daughters disappearing to another Hawaiian island, utterly ignoring the by now well-known fact that their wife and mother could die at any second.
Which brings me to the most egregious offence of this film. For anyone who has ever actually sat—wondering, worrying, waiting—with a prematurely (as in, young) dying loved one, what is funny, or potentially funny, comes only in the absence of any possible light; in those small seconds when you know that if you don’t laugh, you, too, will die. No one seems to understand that in this film. Not the writers or actors; not the audience. (Mind you, I recognized a few bewildered viewers departing the cinema and knew, then, that we weren’t entirely alone.)
At one point in the film, Clooney is standing with his two daughters (ages 10 and 17) while the camera pans the majestic land mass owned for generations by his family (Clooney is, conveniently, trustee) and in prospect of being imminently sold, and he turns to his girls and elucidates in ways that caused Mary to whisper in my ear, “Have they met?” I laughed out loud—the only time throughout the movie’s 115 tedious minutes that I did so.
Really—what is wrong with people? Is it as simple as the fact that we no longer teach phonetics, grammar and literature (in this, I include poetry) in our schools [I just said this to a friend this very morning] and that people, therefore, are happy to see that they are not the only uneducated, unthinking, simplistic writers, thinkers and critics? Or is it that in this complicated world we go to movies not to get in touch with our feelings but, rather, to escape them?
No matter, The Descendants is one of the worst pieces of lazy, stacked-with–devices films I have sat through in eons—and that’s saying something—for once making me glad that I hale from a small and dwindling family.
Rating: 0/5
