Alexander Payne + Clooney + Hawaii = The Descendants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLhdS-8-YS8

Dammit, dammit. Wrong link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vu6qUglcGo

Erudite white people suffering domestic strife in Hawaii. I wonder what Terry Gross will say?

shudder

That will end up in a red envelope in my PO box.

Weirdly difficult to buy Clooney as a dad.

screenplay co-written by Jim Rash, who plays the dean on Community

Prefer Buchanan tbh

Would still watch it and probably enjoy it too though, to be fair

This is the film Louis CK turned down because it meant too much time away from his kids, no?

i'll def take my mom to see this!

i'm not sure that there's ever been a movie set in hawaii where the #1 reason wasn't "million dollar paid vacation to hawaii"

or "pearl harbor"

no, not even that

Louis CK would have killed in that role.

This looks like it's right down some alley that's nowhere near my alley.

weird that this is the first movie he's directed since Sideways, wonder why it took 7 years

lol, " He also teamed up once again with writing partner Jim Taylor to write a draft of the screenplay for the film I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a comedy directed by Dennis Dugan starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James."

lol @ not a single brown or asian person in trailer

so people were pretty into this i think? lotta raves about its depth

Was about to say I don't think I'll ever like anything by Payne again, but then I remembered this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIwval66mbI

i've been dragging my feet on catching up w/that because of the efforts of procuring it, particularly in light of not being as interested in everything that accompanies it -- hadn't realised it was on youtube, so thanks!

A.O. Scott ran out of adverbs praising this thing today.

suspiciously so.

the truth is probably between Scott and J. Hoberman.(in the middle)

My fondness for Citizen Ruth and Election is all that's keeping me from consigning Payne to the Reitman circle of hell.

There are times when you laugh or gasp in disbelief at what has just happened — an old man punches a teenager in the face; a young girl utters an outrageous obscenity; Mr. Clooney slips on a pair of boat shoes and runs, like an angry, flightless bird, to a neighbor’s house — and yet every moment of the movie feels utterly and unaffectedly true.

true american surrealism

george clooney runs in shoes!

lol

You know – angry, flightless birds always slip into their pairs of boat shoes.

i can just imagine how all those "funny" scenes play out (ok, maybe i'm remembering some from the trailer) and... no thanks.

"To call “The Descendants” perfect would be a kind of insult, a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection"

is it better than Citizen Kane?

Reitpayne movies are such critnip.

but but but "like an angry flightless bird" modifies "runs"

i'm excited for this cuz hawaii tho. edelstein's review seemed more trustworthy!

Its flaws are impossible to distinguish from its pleasures.

that should obviously be on the poster, solemnly intoned in the tv spot, etc.

You're all right to be hearing alarm bells, but I thought it split the diff between Election and About Schmidt.

That'd be 2.5/4.

I've only seen one Jason Reitman movie -- really, Juno was not mandatory -- vs all four of Payne's, but I'd say it's pretty insulting to lump him in with JS, even if About Schmidt was kinda loathsome.

JR, grrrr

a young girl utters an outrageous obscenity

We already had this movie and it was called Kick-Ass. Is this better than that?

creators of guilt-ridden slice of life angst starring inevitable Oscar nominees and Best Screenplay winners.

xpost No.

I would totally screw Matthew Lillard over George Clooney, btw

An angry, flightless Lillard in boat shoes is my kind of evolutionary move.

Stephanie Zacharek thinks this resembles Up in the Air way too closely.

That’s the thing about Payne: In pictures like Sideways and About Schmidt, he’s gotten away with the junkiest kind of sentimentality by packing deadpan gags around it, like ice around a dead fish.

Erudite white people suffering domestic strife in Hawaii. I wonder what Terry Gross will say?

― remy bean, Thursday, May 26, 2011 4:18 PM (5 months ago)

Mr. Clooney slips on a pair of boat shoes and runs, like an angry, flightless bird, to a neighbor’s house

you know how angry, flightless birds are always running to their neighbors' houses

oh hey domestic turkey next door can i borrow some worms? thanks i can't go fishing today on account of my awesome boat shoes that i don't want to get wet. thanks and * SQUAWK *

missing the "angry" imo but otherwise excellent

this is going to be this year's american beauty, huh?

i've had to sit through this preview on multiple occasions and each time i hate it a little bit more
that turning point where it goes from family weeper --> lol clooney music is the WORST

lol clooney music

yeah this is a subgenre already isn't it

if this is this year's "American Beauty" I will probably see it once, enjoy it, and then refuse to ever see it again after everyone I talk to online savagely rips it apart for fear of getting Gumped

have you seen Up in the Air? It's worse.

i said on the other thread that i've liked (softly) everything payne has done, but this line from hoberman's review gives me the big fear: Still, save for a reflexive response to the spectacle of “girlfriend in a coma” (ironically, the best scenes are the solos Clooney directs at comatose Hastie—moments that make clear what is otherwise implicit), it left me cold. The pathos is as unearned as the protagonist’s privilege.

I have not seen "Up in the Air"; that got savaged before I had the chance to see it.

yah, ditto

ppl shld stop making movies

The Dean from Community co-wrote this

i want to hear gr8080's take on this

Hey, Hugo has street urchins if that's what you like in a movie.

i'm looking forward to this, although i'm not raising my expectations too high.

payne has a streak of boring, especially lately, but he's a real good director i think.

i liked this! shailene woodley was really good i think, also she is really hot

I hope you're under 30

No, but luckily she is.

the triviality of this film is snowballing since I saw it 5 weeks ago

it was better than i thought it would be, though most of the humor didnt work imo

@ the time it made me want to go read my law school notes on the rule of perpetuities, which of course i absolutely did not do

I hope you're under 30

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Friday, January 6, 2012 8:23 PM (44 minutes ago)

she's a year and a half younger than i am

go for it

i thought her character was the best part about the movie - her decency, and the way she supported her family, the whole thing seemed very loose and natural - not gonna win an oscar or anything but i thought it was a nice performace for the kid. had to be one of her first major film roles?

Didn't buy her as a wild child by scene #2, but I'll blame the script on that, not her.

yeah the contrast between her first scene and the rest of the movie was pretty odd, kind of surprised they didn't go back to that or even allude to it besides when she talked to her mom. that's not to say i didn't buy that someone who acted the way she did for 90% of the movie couldn't be more of a wild child in other parts of her life - she's only 17 and seemed less like an addict than just a girl with a wild side. "drugs" in clooney's dad-speak probably meant "weed"

This and Beginners are the worst movies of the year because they actually try to Say Something.

we disagree semiviolently on Beginners, but Shame & We Need to Kill Kevin Now fail at Saying Something much more foully than either of your suggestions.

We love each other because we disagree on what we hate.

xxp
does it? i've been removed from the film hype cycle long enough now that i was able to walk into this without knowing a thing about it other than clooney was in it (my mom took me). unable to react to any of that, it seemed like a nice, harmless little movie, and i thought it avoided the sap and other traps it easily could have fallen into

my best friend just a couple weeks ago lost his mother in a similar fashion, so maybe i was biased in that way

It's not as poisonous as Up in the Air, true.

and it covered itself in sap.

OK, so Morbs likes Beginners, I like Kevin and Alfred likes "Countdown." Tie a bow on it.

(I'm cool with settling on Shame as the worst relevant movie of the year.)

every scene of talking 2 an unconscious person is p lame but not like unforgiveable

i still havent seen up in the air, & may never

My take.

we’re told, over and over, to concentrate on his star qualities, his confidence.

Pretty much how I feel about Pitt in Moneyball to the letter.

With all its flaws Moneyball offers a better star turn.

No, just less opportunity for its star to be embarrassing (or much of anything).

I still prefer him in TOL but I wasn't embarrassed watching him in Moneyball the way I was with Clooney in his last 67 movies.

Eric, did you read the NYT Lim piece on Pitt? It contends that Beane was a stretch for him.

I didn't believe a word of it, despite the rhetorical filigrees. The role is written as/for a roué.

while i've got all the gays in one place, has clooney ever looked this bad? given the wife's state, the news of infidelity, and the decision to be made wrt the land, i suppose they were going for the haven't-slept-in-weeks look

Syriana

Unless nail-devoid hipster of the state is a look now.

well, "looked this bad" in the heteronormative Oscar-nom way, you mean.

I think he's a toadstool with good skin and hair products.

Clooney likes to play slovenly or humiliated, in those mentioned and Intolerable Cruelty (prob my fave role of his after Out of Sight).

He peaked early, then.

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kzclccCKzS1qbs6n7o1_400.jpg

who's the pretty girl on the left?

Kristy McNichol

lookit the gel glistening!

did not find much to take away from this movie. i think i was immediately turned off since literally everyone in the movie was kind of an asshole, and im not really sure making someone act that way is really a substitute for a convincing character.

oh and the boyfriend character was the cheapest gimmick ever that you can see coming miles away. kinda typifies the glib approach of the movie.

george clooney runs in shoes!

― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour)

^^^ best ilx post of 2011

Erudite white people suffering domestic strife in Hawaii.

Well, yeah, but, other than location, The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya fit this description as well. And all of them have a land auction, too.

Enjoyed it.

boy this really ladles it on, especially towards the end. thought the running in flipflops was funny tho

I enjoyed this. My only real complaint was the casting of Clooney.

i liked this well enough when i saw it, but even at the time i had to sort of artificially muster up for enthusiasm than i felt in my heart or whatever. after a few weeks it's really fading on me. payne is a smart guy, and election is a minor classic, but i don't think this one really shows his talent that much TBH. the nicest way to put it, i suppose, is that this sort of thing isn't really my cup of tea. i guess there's still a little mileage in his old trick of taking a sentimental scene and sort of blowing it up with inappropriate humor, but even on this he seemed to kind of hedge. there's no way this is a "bad" movie, and the criticism of it as "white people problems" is dumb and lazy, but it wasn't really all that great either was it?

MORE enthuasism

damned typos.

HA

It's def not a great movie, but there are some scenes that I've kept revisiting in my mind since I saw this Saturday night. The scene with Woodley in the pool made my eyes tear up in 3 seconds. Also the boyfriend scene at the Princeville hotel really left an impression on me.

That said, I've only been able to make to the movies about 3 times in the last year, so what do I know.

yeah both of those played well when i was watching but when i think back i just envision this kind of clouded gray thing--nothing really pops out. but that's just me i guess.

there are definitely some great lines in this film, but i can't remember any of them. :)

You know, I like Payne, and I admit I haven't seen this one yet. But the guy showed such a searing, acid wit in "Citizen Ruth" and "Election" (which I think even he has admitted may be his only move where absolutely everything was just right). But from "About Schmidt" on it's all been variations on midlife crisis, no? I agree that "rich white people" is reductive and unfair to his subjects, but there's still something about his particular milieu that echoes the exclusivity of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks yet nonetheless continually falls short of the best of their particular skills. I know, good company to be in, but still.

rich white people vs overweight Dorito-eating Hawaiians.

Same class/crass issues as Vanya.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/15/theater/Vanya600.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvktSp2mHi4&feature=related

i was expected to dislike this but ended up having no real problem with it.

i think the 'rich ppl probs' angle is just backwards, esp the charge that it effaces the real racial character of hawaii. the movie is about the narrow class of people who did exactly that. their whiteness and indolent wealth hangs over the whole damn thing. i thought it was all hyper class- and privilege-aware. clooney has to say it aloud when he's making his final decision: "we're haole as shit". what does the one cousin say when he takes them to see the land in his jeep, "i got nothin' but time". lucky him.

i guess there's still a little mileage in his old trick of taking a sentimental scene and sort of blowing it up with inappropriate humor

i think this is perceptive except that i dont find any mileage in it anymore, and i think basically the whole film (or at least the script) is comprised of these kinds of "tricks" that are supposed to elicit the idea of depth or "humanity" or somesuch. i wasnt really buying. have nothing against privileged white people, but i did find almost everyone in this movie unpleasant.

I found the pool scene immature. Wit should deflect bathos but in this movie Payne's attempts actually abetted the bathos.

Robert Forster shd've punched everyone in the face

i think this is tied w/ Ides of March for worst movie i saw this year. like, Ides was obv "worse" but i still hated this so much

dude if those are the worst movies you saw this year, i envy you. seriously. there were some seriously horrible movies in wide release this year.

Relative to the quality of its "ideas" and critical response this is as dreadful as Beginners.

If Beginners had fifth-generation Bohemian Grove Californians as part of its story, maybe.

Relative to the quality of its "ideas" and critical response this is as dreadful as Beginners.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, January 24, 2012 5:59 PM (26 minutes ago)

this is kinda your problem rather than the film's, no?

what's the difference? If I see those problems, then it's the film's.

also that post doesn't quite parse. are you saying it seems to bat around big ideas that aren't interesting? that's kind of how i read your post, even though that isn't what you actually wrote.

Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry about the confusion.

what's the difference? If I see those problems, then it's the film's.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, January 24, 2012 6:27 PM (2 minutes ago)

i mean you're bringing in a lot of extradiegetic baggage - not that the criticisms aren't fair, but for someone not immersed in the film crit hype cycle, they don't resonate as well

that a.o. scott review was so over the top that i just kind of purposely forgot it right away. i don't know what other critics were saying about this.

i felt it was just kind of "ok" in every category. funny ha-ha? a little. droll? a little. sad? a little. good acting? sure, i guess. smart direction? sort of.

it kind of lost some points for the opening vice-over, which didn't seem to serve any purpose or fit into the rest of the film tonally or thematically.

i mean i guess the point of the opening VO was to signal that this film would deal with hawaii as like a real place where people live and work and stuff, not a tourist's fantasy of hawaii. but the film itself made that point just fine -- the filmmakers didn't trust slow joe in the back row to grasp that, i guess? i felt condescended to.

i thought that was meant to be some kind of switcheroo or unreliable narrator thing (im not sure to what effect), because he gives you the spiel about how hawaii's not paradise and then for the rest of the movie it is shot so that it looks like freaking paradise, with clooney's family mostly living like laid back beach bums. i sure didnt come away from it feeling like i experienced the 'real' and gritty hawaii

what about the Hawaiians crunching on potato chips in the first ten minutes

i don't think it was patterned enough to be an unreliable narrator thing. it's just sloppiness. i mean you could say the film deals productively in the contrast between hawaii as a natural paradise and hawaii as a place people live and work. but the voice over made it seem like it would be a film à thèse or something, and it clearly wasn't. i'd have to see it again but i'm not sure the themes came through very clearly. again, it felt a bit sloppy in that regard, esp. compared to something like election.

i don't really like the word 'miscast' but yeah, i feel like the story this movie was trying to tell kind of got hid by clooney somehow. it's about a boring plodder who feels, for unexplained reasons, to do the right thing, and where that lands him. a long-sufferer w/o charisma. he says at the beginning he's the only one out of his lazy clan to have a real job and not blow it all (maybe this isn't quite true). i think you are meant to understand why the wife would be off having fun and falling for someone else, and why he would be clueless. it's hard to look at george c. and think this tho.

good point goole

yeah i'm not sure that anything in the movie clearly developed the process of him arriving at a decision re. his family's land. nor did we get a sense of what the broader social stakes of that decision were let alone what it might mean to the protagonist privately or what it had to do with his wife's impending death. maybe it's just subtle and i'd have to watch it again?

im imagining paul giamatti in the lead and the movie suddenly makes more sense

huh yeah it's kind of similar to win-win in a lot of ways, loved that movie

i mean a certain degree of fuzziness can be justified in terms of "real characters, messy real-life problems" but you know films are like 120 minutes long and they are like artworks and stuff, so they are most satisfying when you feel that the filmmakers have done their job and patterned the screenplay in ways where you can kind of weigh out and sift through the patterns productively during and after.

For this movie to be convincing it would have had to dig into the details of buying and selling land in a state that was once a protectorate, not to mention the landowners' shall we say complex relations with the natives; but lately nothing interests Alexander Payne but the quick sell, in this case George Clooney Cries in Boat Shoes.

this one felt a little too amorphous and undefined, i guess is what i am saying. there were moments when the filmmakers seem to have realized this and telegraphed certain points in a very didactic way. but the whole thing didn't feel very integrated.

xpost

but y'know maybe if everything WAS tied together more neatly i'd be complaining about that.

i mean, you know what's a recent indie film that was a film à thèse? away we fucking go. and that was one of the worst films i've ever sat through.

(I'll say it for the last time, but, guys, if The Cherry Orchard ever plays your town. save your money. That thing has all of these identical problems.)

Someone just sent me the screenplay.

who feels, for unexplained reasons, to do the right thing,

maybe not in the eyes of those impoverished indigenous Hawaiian relations, eh

I hated this film, but didn't those "impoverished indigenous Hawaiian relations" impoverish themselves? And Clooney's character was as "indigenous" as the rest of them

dude if those are the worst movies you saw this year, i envy you. seriously. there were some seriously horrible movies in wide release this year.

i should note that i only saw like 7 movies released this year.

were they impoverished or just sort of layabouts, surviving on declining trust funds?

yeah, Clooney says at the start that they all basically frittered away their money

i found this quite touching!

last scene of cloons on the couch w/ his daughters is cuet def, overall its ok, p good

it wasnt... what I was expecting

yeah i'm not sure that anything in the movie clearly developed the process of him arriving at a decision re. his family's land. nor did we get a sense of what the broader social stakes of that decision were let alone what it might mean to the protagonist privately or what it had to do with his wife's impending death. maybe it's just subtle and i'd have to watch it again?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, January 24, 2012 7:00 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

felt like clooney was just fed up w/the half ass corruption that comprised p much his whole life

george clooney runs in shoes!

^^ still hilarious

http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/making-the-descendants-funny-and-de-funnying-it-too/

**spoiler**

Q.
Were there any scenes that you thought were really funny that you had to cut because they were too funny?

A.
Mr. Faxon: There’s a scene at the end of the movie where they’re spreading the mother’s ashes in the ocean, and it gets broken up by a cruise and a bunch of drunk guys. That was shot, it was funny. But they didn’t want to cut away from that very poignant emotional closure.

i found it quite touching but i was on my 4th beer.

Clooney's final scene with his wife is the phoniest thing i've seen in a while

Watching Clooney cry is like watching George W. Bush read a children's book.

yeah that was by far the worst bit of the film

that's why it's his OSCAR CLINCHER

Oscar statuette, sobbing, to Dr. Morbius: "Finally, someone who understands me!"

i want to hear gr8080's take on this

― PEDAL TO THE METAL GRANDAD parp parp (remy bean), Friday, November 18, 2011 9:35 AM (2 months ago)

i finally saw this!

everyone in Hawaii can't stop talking about how OTM they get what Hawaii is really like, and I def agree. it's more than a little weird that the first hollywood film to accurately depict modern day hawaii has so few non-whites, but its def a real part of Honolulu society-- right down to the "ocean club" they belong to (irl its the Canoe club, and as exclusive as an average country club).

i havent liked anything payne's done since election, and this wasnt anywhere near the best thing I've seen lately but I was legit moved at times.

was louis ck actually approached for this? that would have been awesome, but i enjoyed the cloonster.

need to know if DLH saw this yet

i felt like a learnt something about what it's like to live in a place i know nothing about, so i'm glad to hear it wasn't all nonsense.

i felt like a learnt something about what it's like to live in a place i know nothing about,

being the boat shoe in which George Clooney sticks his foot.

i was wearing boat shoes when i saw it.

I'm now semi-convinced Clowney will lose Oscar to French guy's teeth

As now-film-pundit Bret Easton Ellis tweets:
As I predicted in my December 3rd 2011 tweet: "The Artist" will win the Oscar for best picture, best director and best actor.

saw this in the theater with my mom. she was an absolute wreck during the ashes scene (she had done likewise with her mothers ashes two years ago) (plus tit took place where her and my dad - long since divorced - had their honeymoon).
might have been a mistake to take her to this one.

i thought it was a quality movie, but Clooney - last scene with his wife especially - felt a pretty flat.

i still haven't seen it but yeah my hawaii friends like it too, are relieved that someone finally put a recognizable version of non-waikiki-theme-park hawaii in a movie, etc.. plus my mom liked it. even just the trailer Looked Like Hawaii; the power lines against the sky and the roadside foliage and the slick leaves and everybody's clothes reminded me of the movies i made in high school (which were, haha, not set in hawaii). when i see it i'll post.

spoiler: the only big island scenes are at night, but there are a few shots of coral graffiti on the kaahumanu highway at dusk

Those shots are actually extreme close-ups of George Clooney's bare left sole.

coral graffiti on the kaahumanu highway at dusk

man last time i was visiting w/ my gf i almost suggested we make some of this, which i've never done. next time. sometime.

This movie was weak sauce. Up In The Air (Clooney) was better.

The Artist wasn't that good either.

I can kinda feel like I'm choking up at a couple sad scenes but that doesn't make a movie

otm but this was def better than up in the air

it was p good imho, not w/flaws but def had some level of insight going on

the thing I guess I thought was interesting abt it was the take on ripening karma, like all the things he attempted to ignore for so long came back at him and there wasnt really anything he could do abt it, he had to deal w/it, he was trapped by circumstance, it wasnt just an emotional reality

also the whole political aspect of the sale of the land i thought was shown really well just from a v experiential pov

also the whole political aspect of the sale of the land i thought was shown really well just from a v experiential pov

― lag∞n, Monday, January 30, 2012 1:42 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really? i remember there being only a few bits about this.

yeah thats what I liked abt it was v ordinary like in the flow of clooneys life, v show dont tell

I mean political on a macro as well as familial etc level

bau bridges character I thought was a v true to life type of dude who couldve easily been written for lolz but was instead allowed to shine in all his depressed passive aggressive glory

it was kind of lol imagining his character as bizzaro-world jeffry lebowski

more like real world lebowski, now that I think abt it maybe that was the intention

the dude would jive well in Hawaii.

Beau Bridges is now in a Broadway musical opp a Jonas Brother

livin the life

atop a Jonas Brother

Q.
Were there any scenes that you thought were really funny that you had to cut because they were too funny?

A.
Mr. Faxon: There’s a scene at the end of the movie where they’re spreading the mother’s ashes in the ocean, and it gets broken up by a cruise and a bunch of drunk guys. That was shot, it was funny. But they didn’t want to cut away from that very poignant emotional closure.

― Burritos are one of the things I'm nostalgic about!!! (Eazy), Sunday, January 29, 2012 12:09 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i might've loved the movie if they had left this in

thanks for the perspective gr80. i still think i wouldve preferred to see a movie about nonwhite hawaiians, i dunno

yeah me too, but they decided to make a movie based on a book that was about rich haoles, and they did a p good job of it. the mom & daughter who's house they go over to and apologize for the pubes texts rang especially true to me-- feel like there really could have been more characters like that.

despite the scene where matt and him finally talk in the hotel suite, i feel like Sid was pretty useless overall, and suspect he had a more fleshed character in the book. same for the alzheimer's grandmother-- like there was no reason at all for her to have alzheimer's aside from setting up something for Sid to get punched in the face over.

i really loved how many lingering establishing shots there were of the mountains and the ocean and diff parts of urban honolulu.

i will see this again, may not have given it a fair shake

I was totally all who is this comic relief kid re sid but then he started to make sense to me, def still feel like he couldve been 75% less ott

never needs to be seen a second time by anyone

ok, i've cancelled my netflix order, thx.

phew that was close

Dr Morbius 1D0% OTM

think i'm going to see it again.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h62fEE11dvs/TuZRhD3h7NI/AAAAAAAAIhM/yRpztwRSqk8/s1600/George-Clooney-Running-in-Hawaii-520x736.jpg

RUNNING

How could y'all not love the costumes in this?

terrible form clooney!

its hard to go balls out in those puppies

were he mid striking thered be NO PROBLEM

jeez clooney

http://www.fresnobeehive.com/archives/george_clooney300-thumb-300x400.jpg

can we get Robert Forster to punch Aaron Sorkin in the face if he wins best adapted screenplay again?

sure np dr

Finally saw this. Um...it was very pretty to look at, and the music was lovely. Otherwise, it was about on par with, like, Kramer Vs. Kramer (i.e. fair-to-middlin' Oscar fodder). In a way, I was the prime audience to get my heart strings tugged hard after having several family members recently fade away in hospital, but it really didn't get to me on that level at all. I'm happy for Jim Rash that he won an Oscar. I just wish it had been for something better.

yeah i agree. i wanted this to be some kind of emotional blockbuster but i never got really involved with it. it was perfectly respectable and well-made but not super engaging.

this movie was bogus

feel like he kind of bit the Michael Clayton ending

how so? i don't actually remember the last shot.

i think "bogus" is actually a kind of brutal but fair term to apply to this film.

ok wait now i remember. do you just mean it ends w/ a silent long take meant to make us wonder what the character(s) are thining? that's kind of tradition that goes back far beyond michael clayton though.

a.o. scott's incredibly enthusiastic review was really weird btw, and reads even weirder today.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/movies/descendants-with-george-clooney-review.html?pagewanted=all

To call “The Descendants” perfect would be a kind of insult, a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection. Its flaws are impossible to distinguish from its pleasures. For example: after what feels as if it should be the final scene, a poignant, quiet tableau of emotional resolution and apt visual beauty, Mr. Payne adds another, a prosaic coda to a flight of poetry. Without saying too much or spoiling the mood, I will say that I was grateful for this extra minute, a small gift at the end of a film that understands, in every way, how hard it can be to say goodbye.

i mean it's a kind of 400 blows gesture in a way.

I wish more movies simply ran out of film and were forced to freeze.

...on George Clooney in sockless boat shoes

"bogus" is a good word. A dubious honor for Clooney to star in two of the most meretricious Oscar films of the last twenty years.

There’s a scene at the end of the movie where they’re spreading the mother’s ashes in the ocean, and it gets broken up by a cruise and a bunch of drunk guys. That was shot, it was funny. But they didn’t want to cut away from that very poignant emotional closure.

You can't have humor interrupting very poignant emotional closure!

Still prefer both to Syriana.

DWH needs to reappreciate Kramer vs Kramer

someone get Sotosyn some friggin' boat shoes already

I'm wearing a pair with argyles.

I'm not saying Kramer Vs. Kramer is bad, Morbs. It's just nothing terribly special, and surely not the best film of 1979 any more than The Descendants has one of the very best screenplays of 2011 (hopefully you'll forgive my dubiousness towards the decisions of the esteemed Academy).

Morbs agrees, I think.

he liked Boat Shoes Vs. Boat Shoes more than a lot of us

Both end with the credits rolling over George Clooney as he stares thoughtfully into the middle distance

It's not the fact that they end with that kind of shot, but holding it for so long with the credits over it is something I can't remember seeing before MC

i considered barking a little in defense of kramer vs. kramer, yesterday. i remember it fondly, though i was only 12 at the time, but i decided that it's been too long for me to say with any certainty that i'd still like it. also, i thought there was a slight misogynist streak to the descendants, similar to what jonathan rosenbaum objected to in KvK.

I kinda think all the characters in The Descendants are equally miserable.

It's not the fact that they end with that kind of shot, but holding it for so long with the credits over it is something I can't remember seeing before MC

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, May 22, 2012 9:02 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'll agree that it works better in michael clayton.

I found this kind of a snore, tbh. However I really loved seeing Hawaii shown in a 'hey people live here' way. Honestly I enjoyed it more once I ignored the story and just watched it as a travel documentary, lol

Not bad--except for a couple of scenes near the end (Judy Greer's bedside scene), not as mawkish as I expected/feared.

However I really loved seeing Hawaii shown in a 'hey people live here' way.

I liked that too. Shailene Woodley and Robert Forster were good. And not to get sidetracked, but another demurral on Kramer vs. Kramer, which is really good, and might indeed be the best American film of 1979--I'd take it over Apocalypse Now and (easily) Being There, and maybe over Breaking Away too.

I saw this on DVD some years ago and I see I didn't bother to comment in here at the time.

My lasting, if vague, impression is that it might have been faithful to some archetypal Hawaiian story that rang true as a bell to the residents of Hawaii and it possibly held a mirror up to the islands such as has rarely been captured on film, but for a non-Hawaiian such as myself I recall it as insufficiently engaging or entertaining to allow me derive any real enjoyment from it. I recall all the main characters as coddled dullards with more money than sense, who stayed in character to the bitter end. Fascinating is not the word that springs to mind.

george clooney runs in shoes!

― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour)

If you think of this as a Flirting with Disaster-type road film mixed with a Terms of Endearment-type melodrama, the road film is better.

It has a good soundtrack.

i never did see this