The Descendants (2011)

We Bought a Zoo and The Descendants, two films about a father having to come to terms with the loss of his wife and reconnect with his children. Whilst Matt Damon's character moved to the countryside, bought a zoo and met Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney doesn't have such an easy time of things.

Lawyer and property owner Matt King (George Clooney) is told that his wife Elizabeth, in a coma after a boating accident, will never wake up and has a living will requesting that her care be withdrawn. Ahead of her life support machine being turned off, Matt must reconnect with his daughters, 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and 17-year-old Alex (Shailene Woodley), and inform friends and family that she is about to die so they can pay their last respects. In the process, he finds out that Elizabeth had been having an affair and was planning on leaving him. If that weren't enough, he has to juggle the selling of his family's land to a real estate developer.

After churning out four films in eight years, director Alexander Payne took seven years to get around to number five. Was it worth the wait? He's certainly had long enough to work on it and I loved Sideways so he had quite a lot to live up to. The numerous awards it won, including the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Golden Globes for Best Film and Best Actor, meant that my hopes were high. Fortunately, it met them. Well, sort of. I mean, it's a very good film: funny, moving, well written and very well acted but it's just lacking something. It doesn't feel like one of the ten best films of the year, as so many critics named it. More than anything, it feels too linear. The story unfolds but it does so in a straight line, never really deviating from its inexorable march towards the ending that simply happens. The only surprise is that there aren't any. Matt finds out his wife was cheating on him, so he goes looking for the man (Matthew Lillard). We all know he's going to confront the man eventually, so when it happens, no matter how good the scene is (and it is), it's lacking any kind of punch. Even the negotiations over the sale of his land result in a predictable conclusion.

It might not venture far off the beaten track but at least it does it well. Matt's attempts to reconnect with his daughters, with whom he had a distant relationship, provide easily the best scenes in the film. Other highlights include the very realistic way the film deals with the impending death of a loved one; the seemingly endless parade of cousins Matt has to endure, among them Cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges); and the often hilariously non-sequitur Sid (Nick Krause). There isn't any scene or any character that doesn't really work and it's just a pity that the whole thing comes off as lacking any sense of direction or a meaningful message other than "stuff happens".

Straightforward? Yes, but it's still a very, very good film. George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in particular are superb, it's deftly made and Alexander Payne strikes a nice balance between heartfelt and funny.

8 out of 10.