The Decendants (2011)

Rating: 80%

Now I was very surprised that this was getting good reviews. In fact, when a saw a trailer to it when I went to see Breaking Dawn part 1, I thought it was going to be a really cheesy film. So I found it to be a bit of a raise in the eyebrow to find out that it currently has an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. And when it got nominated a few times for the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes, I decided to put my foot down and see this film for myself. The result...not bad.


Plot: Matt King is a lawyer in Hawaii who is currently working on selling untouched land from the island of Kauai with his cousins. But one day his wife, Elizabeth, ends up in a boating accident and is in comatose. So Matt has to start looking after his to daughters, Scottie and Alex who he hardly ever sees anymore while Elizabeth is still in comatose. Trying to raise the kids becomes very hard to do considering that he doesn't really know them, and to top it off, Alex reveals to Matt that Elizabeth was cheating on him prior to the accident.


Okay to I was wrong that this was going to be cheesy as cheesy gets. I mean the story isn't extremely original, but the acting was nice, it was well put together, I'd say this is definitely a film to see whenever you want to see a plain old nice movie. I think my favorite scenes are the first one when Matt is talking about how Hawaiian people have problems like everyone else, and when Alex was going underwater in the pool. There are some parts that are predictable, but nothing to incredibly bad.


Actors/Characters:
George Clooney/Matt King: He did a good job. Well, what's more to say is that he was just...George Clooney. His acting was well done and all that, but it's nothing unique to what George Clooney does.
Shailene Woodley/Alexandria King: I thought she did a nice job. And again, I liked her first scene in the pool.
Nick Krause/Sid: He was an okay character. He had his cute moments for sure.

Music: The music was nice. Nothing much to it.

Editing: Most of the editing I was fine with. My only issue was a point when Matt was sitting down at a restaurant. It started as a medium, profile shot where he just sits down, but then three seconds later after he sits down, they roughly play the entire action again only it's in a close-up profile shot (roughly). I thought that was really dumb.


And that's my review for The Descendants. It was an enjoyable film, but I wouldn't go so far as to nominate it for best picture. In my opinion, if the film does become nominated for best picture at the Oscars, it'll really be there just as one of those films that are there just to fill in the remaining spots like Avatar, Social Network, and The Kids are Alright from the last to years.