MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

chetanchopra012 The Descendants is a movie about a man in mid-life crisis and how he successfully manages to come out of it. Matt(GC) is the sole trustee of a huge piece of land and a lawyer. He has never really bothered to care about his two precocious daughters, Scotti and Alexandra, 10 and 17 respectively. The problem arises when his wife suffers a brutal head injury because she was adventurous enough to ride a motorboat. This is when things take a downturn for Matt as he has to now take care of his daughters on his own. Meanwhile he also finds out that his wife was having an affair at the time of her accident. It crushes him and afterwards he decides to confront the culprit too. Clooney has give n a nice performance in thiis one. It is worth a watch!

sharky_55 Payne's pathetic leading men tell the stories of backstage stars, the forgotten roles, the lives outside of the limelight. They're visibly and mentally past their prime, although they're not always happy to admit the fact. How does Clooney's Matt King fit in with this echelon of middle-aged men yet to come of age? He's too good looking, for one. Did I say leading men? Payne's muses are more like character actors that aspire to be leads; the sidekick from Sideways is actually a former heart-throb gone to seed, who relies on the odd woman to notice his fading good looks and small claim to fame. Clooney, on the other hand, has only ripened with age, still the gold standard for a Hollywood sex symbol. He might not be up to it physically (and the film makes light of this in a painful jog slash speedwalk), but in spite of his opening monologue (which should be laced with bitterness but ends up more satisfied), Matt King seems to have it all. Why have the monologue, anyway? Payne's always been a great director of actors, and although the technique's been used to good effect before (Nicholson's entire series of letters in About Schmidt is a revelation in slow growing humility), these men have always told more through body language and action. I guess Clooney doesn't have the same gravitas of a Nicholson or a Giamatti, who channel their mid or late life crisis through physical decay and a panicked realisation at what they haven't achieved. Clooney may run funny, but he's too casually dashing to convincingly portray someone at odds with his entire family, much less someone work obsessed and liable to be cheated on. His persona made much more sense in Up in the Air, an incentive-driven, one man crusade set to disprove the 'no man is an island' mantra, so focused on a single number he eventually begins to doubt himself. In many ways The Descendants is Payne's weakest film to date, a clunky mishmash of Payne's better marks, like the sharp edge of a comic satire in Election, and the dissection of red-faced protagonists who splutter and stumble their way to an eventual understanding of their flaws and features. There's so much secondhand embarrassment in the desperate appeals of his earlier characters for lost glory; their lives are mishap after mishap, and after a while they're not sure whether to laugh or collapse into a miserable heap. The Descendants, by contrast, seems rather embarrassed of these characters' downfalls, not content to allow scenes to simply wallow in their melancholy. It's dripping in bathos; almost every moment of sentimentality has to be livened or 'saved' by comic relief. The most annoying intrusion is Sid, the inappropriately-stoned boyfriend walking straight out of a raunchy comedy, with the tact of a whooping megaphone. When Judy Greer forgives Elizabeth in a tearful eulogy near the end, Matt is visibly embarrassed by this show of emotion; he's the deceased's husband and yet hasn't cried this much over the whole affair. But his quick move to usher the hysterical woman out of the hospital room is flippant enough that the moment is more comedic than introspective. Payne doesn't hang Matt out to dry as much as his other protagonists, perhaps because his unique situation is an ethical dilemma for the ages. The entire movie is a painful journey for closure that may never be found; how exactly do you extract answers from a soon-to-be corpse, much less hurl angry abuse that will forever fall on deaf ears? Matt finds strength in having to replace Elizabeth's role as the available parent, and in his journey goes from someone whose dialogue is written like a babysitter's, to someone who finally finds common ground with his family and heritage. How it all goes down is a little hokey - that precious, delicate ceremony where they spread her ashes at sea - but then Payne finishes with one of the most startlingly realised endings of his oeuvre, depicting a family that hasn't quite gotten over what they've been through, but has survived and will continue to do so together.

Nik Rawlins So George Clooney plays a husband who hasn't paid attention to his family in years, so far that he states he hasn't taken care of his own daughter alone since she was 3. Of course he sees the errors of his ways only after his wife is in a terrible accident and ends up in a coma, from which she is not going to wake up.But then, surprise, he finds out she had a lover and man, why would she do that? I mean he has been an absent, distant, constantly working partner, how dare his wife find someone else who pays attention to her! (btw, sarcasm) Now his quest becomes to find this man, I mean he could take care of his children, figure out how to be a father, say goodbye to his wife, but no, he is gonna find his wife's lover. There is also a bit of plot about a land selling deal and George Clooney's character standing up to his family (cousins?) and not selling, the land, i don't know why that was in there.Also Scotty: was he supposed to the comedic relief? Was he supposed to be funny? Why is he there?

Fallen Eye A very authentic film, that evokes on numerous occasions, conflicting and vacillating emotions. At one point The Descendants was sitting at a solid 5/10 for me, but then when it was all said and done, after all the goodbyes and apologies, ultimately the film hit a well deserved 7.3/10.It dealt with matters that I hadn't really seen in a motion picture before, while simultaneously running another story, of love, in such a special manner; in that, The Descendants created a dialogue between itself and the viewer.Matt was a comprehensible character, that was dealing with many conflicting emotions as best he could. Alex was a testing character, but also ultimately understandable. Sid... Oh Sid, a very vexatious character, that you end up perhaps, hating to love.Alexander Payne had a fairly excellent stab at depicting these characters that fluctuate so often, emotionally and logically. The conclusion to all the moving parts in their different directions was quite satisfactory also.The Descendants was more than decent, and descended and ascended as erratically, though understandably, as the Pacific waves surrounding Hawaii.