Director: Alexander Payne
About as Oscar bait-y as a film can be without featuring British nobility, The Descendants still manages to be a decent way to spend two hours. The performances are good, the writing's generally good, and aside from some early clunkiness, the film is well-directed.
I noticed this in Win Win as well, but these movies that combine comedy and drama have a very fine line to walk - give a character too many laugh lines, and he or she is out of place in the dramatic portions of the film. It takes skill to draw a character who is both funny and real - The Descendants doesn't quite accomplish this with all of its characters.
I thought it worked with most of the important characters--Clooney, both the daughters, Robert Forster as the father-in-law, especially. The dopey, turns-out-not-to-be-so-dopey kid (I can't remember his name) was a big mistake, though.
ReplyDeleteThat's largely who I was talking about - his name is Sid, and he clearly functions as a plot device, as a kind of observer of all these things and a babysitter for the youngest daughter. But yeah, the scene between him and Clooney was easily the weakest in the film.
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