George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in THE DESCENDANTS (Merie Wallace/Fox Searchlight Films)

Directed by Alexander Payne
Produced by Jim Burke & Payne
Written by Payne, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings;; Released by Fox Searchlight.
USA. 115 min. Rated R
With George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Nick Krause, Amara Miller, Mary Birdsong, & Rob Huebel

George Clooney invokes Election’s Jim McAllister in Alexander Payne’s 1999 dark comedy. In Payne’s long awaited follow up to Sideways, the director and Matthew Broderick struck gold with the sometimes scheming, sometimes in-over-his-head high school teacher whose successive ideas backfired in such complex and hilarious ways. Clooney’s rendition of Matt King, the descendent of one of Hawaii’s native royalty, has all if not more of the physical presence of a man figuring out his next move, yet he is left stranded by a surprising but unspectacular script, where the pathos and humor are both often lost.

The plot isn’t overly convoluted, but it is the kind of complex, thinking person’s story, a signature of this director, in which you’ll need to recall just exactly who knows what, just to decipher a scene. Matt’s wife, who is in a coma from the start of the film, left some unfinished business in their tight-knit Oahu community. To be specific, she was having an affair, and Matt has been too consumed by business affairs to notice.

His family owns the last remaining undeveloped virgin acreage on Kaua’i (the locals are always exact about the pronunciation). As the executor of the family estate, Matt must decide on which developer should be awarded the lucrative contract. With his wife’s boating incident, he is pulled away from the involved negotiations back into domesticity, and he learns quickly of both his wife’s unhappiness and his two daughters’ emotional difficulties. Teenaged Alexandra (the talented newcomer Shailene Woodley in what will soon be called her “breakthrough”) is a malcontent troublemaker, who breaks the news to Matt of her mother’s infidelity, while the younger Scottie (Amara Miller) is becoming old enough to follow in her mouthy sister’s footsteps.

Clooney as an actor, director, producer, you name it, is almost always superb. There’s a special energy he brings. Here, though, he’s just not as memorable as he has been (Out of Sight, anyone?), and The Descendants is just not as good as Payne’s previous films. Most problematic is the lack of information on Matt’s life pre-coma. We end up feeling like we’re playing catch up along with him for the entirety of the film, and frustratingly, many of his decisions are without much resonance. Often his biggest choices, like to track down (read: stalk) his wife’s lover—played superbly by Matthew Lillard, who, in his one real scene, puts in one of the best performances of the film—feel frantic rather than pivotal. He’s a step behind at all times, and it makes him rather passive. Pair Matt with the hardheaded, opinionated, and mature-for-her age Alexandra, and I’m not surprised he looks utterly exhausted in every scene.

Payne is no slouch, obviously. There is a lot of good humor (though Alexandra’s boyfriend Sid, played by another up-and-comer, Nick Krause, might make you cringe with his bad sitcom dialogue). The visual flow of this film is amazing, and the director has a way of keeping us engaged no matter what’s happening. He is of the Coen brothers school—he loves to show us the due process by which his characters go about their lives, and even how they receive their info. Matt listens to Scottie’s classmate’s mother complain on and on about his daughter’s bad behavior and his father-in-law (Robert Forster in another spot-on performances) as he rudely speaks his mind about Matt’s personal responsibility for the wife’s accident (unfounded). The camera also follows Brian, the home wrecker, as he jogs on the beach for what feels like a very long time. There is a richness created in this detailing that few directors pull off this well.

Without really feeling Matt’s whole story, though, I’m not even on board with the ending that sums up all his sudden life lessons (even though it’s impossible not to see it coming). I was moved at times, but only because I felt like I should be, as I understood the stakes, but they weren’t quite built in organically. I do know from the beginning I was rooting for the land to stay out of the hands of hotel developers, and hoping that the terrible accident might somehow bring this about. Not that I was rooting for anyone’s ill health, but if that’s what it takes for us to question the development of 25,000 acres of pristine wilderness, there’s a good lesson in here somewhere.