The Descendants

The Descendants

Rating 5 out of 10

Do you feel you are enjoying the holiday season a little too much?  Spreading more joy than one person should be allowed?  You can go see this new George Clooney movie that I'm calling the feel bad movie of the season.  At one hour fifty minutes the movie seems much longer.  By watching the trailers you'd think you are going to see comedy.  Some are even selling it that way.  While there are a few funny parts (very few) it is mostly a sad movie of people coping with sad situations.

George plays Matt King.  He is a married father of two girls living in Hawaii.  In the first scenes of the movie we see Matts wife in a horrible speed boat accident where she goes into a coma that she will not recover.  Matt has been a workaholic who didn't spend enough time with his daughters or pay enough attention to his wife.  Turns out his wife was not a saint and his two daughters are foul mouth brats that talk back more to dad than help him thru this tough time.

There is a couple other sub-plots.  One has Matt as the head of a family trust that controls prime Hawaiian real estate that must be sold soon making himself and lots of cousins multi-millionaires.  Does he sell out his heritage for million$?

There is lots of Oscar talk for Clooney.  This is the type slow paced emotional movie that usually gets nominations.  It's not a bad movie.  Just a slow, boring and depressing movie.  Even if it's mostly well made.