The Descendants
Alexander Payne's latest is assured, without being all cocky about it.
SCREENINGS:
Saturday, September 10, 6 p.m.
Visa Screening Room (189 Yonge Street)
Sunday, September 11, 12:30 p.m.
Winter Garden Theatre (189 Yonge Street)
Saturday, September 17, 11 a.m.
Visa Screening Room (189 Yonge Street)
Apart from always seeming so pleased with themselves, Alexander Payne’s films tend to suffer under the weighty wit of their own satire. As soon as you think someone’s going to say something and mean something real, Payne pulls back, deferring to foot-in-mouth gawkiness. Blissfully, Payne seems to have overcome this with The Descendants, which casts George Clooney as Matt King, a wealthy real estate lawyer who’s in the midst of inking a nine-figure land development deal when his wife (Patricia Hastie) slips into a life-threatening coma in the wake of a boating accident. As the self-described “backup parent,” Matt has to break the news to his daughters, 10-year-old troublemaker Scottie (Amara Miller), and recovering teenage bad girl Alex (Shailene Woodley). Also: his wife was cheating on him. Heavy hangs the head.
The Descendants is one of those films that forces its characters to make really tough decisions and, frustratingly at times, they always make the right ones. Clooney has never been better, pulling off flailing middle-ager without resorting to the mugging of Up in the Air. MVP, though, is Robert Forster as Matt’s cranky father-in-law, a character who weaves a thread of masculine responsibility through Clooney’s character that weaves down into Sid (Nick Krause), Alex’s stoner surfer boyfriend. There’s a maturity here that comes off as self-assurance, not self-admiration.