The Descendants 2011
I don’t remember hearing much about this movie when it came out in 2011 but it got very good reviews. One problem is I think I was mixing it up with the much worse film, Aloha, also set in Hawaii. This movie won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and that is usually a really good sign I will like a movie. While at heart this is a family drama, the context is this family is part heir to a huge chunk of undeveloped beach front property in Hawaii, and the entire extended family are descendants of Hawaiian royalty and early missionaries, now with no apparent ethnic Hawaiian blood. For no reason, this family has been blessed with this incredibly valuable inheritance, but that doesn’t mean their family isn’t completely messed up. I don’t want to give away too much, but it is mostly George Clooney’s movie as his wife is in a coma after a boating accident. He tries to find out where the marriage went wrong and put things back together while there is a looming deadline on selling the inherited property, which will make everyone in the extended family very rich.
At times the movie feels a little forced and in a lot of ways these aren’t people that are particularly likeable, but they do kind of grow on you. And the background stuff about life in Hawaii makes for a nice setting with a lot of its own interests, both historical and cultural. Clooney is very good and carries the movie for the most part, but his daughters are good too plus some of the extended family and other characters, with very few ethnic Hawaiians, though there are amazingly few ethnic Hawaiians left in Hawaii. Billed as a comedy drama, the movie is much more drama with hardly any real comedy, though things aren’t terribly heavy. It is more of a light drama. Definitely worth watching and the Blu-ray has some good extras.
Written: 06 Oct 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital