I went to this movie on Thanksgiving Day because of how much I love Hawaii. If there’s going to be scenery of my favorite place, I want to be there, even if it’s a holiday and I have to brave the crowds.
The story is a bit slow, non-complex. If Mr. Clooney had not been in the film, no one would be interested, except perhaps ethnic Hawaiians and conservationists.
Matt King (Clooney) is the last trustee of some Royal lands. In 7 years the trust will end, so the heirs need to decide how to divest themselves of the 25,000 acres before then. However, Only Matt (referred to as “Cousin Matty”) has the authority to make the decision. Naturally, the cousins want to sell the land to a resort developer, so everyone stands to make a lot of money, and everyone therefore wants Matt to sign the papers asap, never mind that his wife is dying right now.
She’s in an irreversible coma, and the docs inform Matt that the time has come to initiate the protocols of the DNR, that is, remove the ventilator. Matt tells his older daughter Alexandra that Mom’s going to die. Alexandra tells Matt that Mom was having an affair.
After some understandable outbursts, Matt decides to find the Other Man so that he can tell him Elizabeth is dying, so that he can come and say good-bye too. Yes, this is reminiscent of The Other Man, a far better film, and if you want to see a movie about a cuckolded husband who makes nice with the man who turned his wife’s head, see that one instead, because—duh—it’s Antonio Banderas and Liam Neeson, what’s not to like? (It’s also reminiscent, of course, of the Mrs. Keppel incident, but we’ll leave that for another day.)
Turns out the other man, Brian Speers is a real estate agent who stands to make multiplenteous dollars if Matt decides to sell the 25,000 acres to a certain Don Somebody. The Other Wife’s name is Julie, which gave me the creeps, because I know a Julie Speers. Julie instead of Brian comes to the bedside of the comatose dying wife and gives her what-for and who blames her? (Sorry about “multiplenteous.”)
I’m really not a fan of these weird coincidences that movie-writers like to jam into their scripts. Like in Drive, where the guy who wants Ryan Gosling to drive a race car for him, is the same guy who wants to kill Gosling’s next-door neighbor. In a city of 10 million people, the same Jewish pizza place owner wants next-door neighbors for totally different things. And in Hugo, a disaster of a movie I saw yesterday in which the godfather of Isabelle is the same man who invented the little automaton that Hugo’s father saved out of a museum. And here, in Descendants, the man who is having an affair with Matt’s wife—in a state of a million people—is the same man who stands to make tons of money from brokering the deal on the royal lands.
(Speaking of Hugo, apparently I am the only person who hates this movie. It got something like 97% on the Tomatometer.)
Also, the scenery wasn’t that great. It was great, mind you, because it was Oahu and Kauai, but there was only one moment where I gasped out loud at the beauty—the vertically folded green hills, you know the ones. Not the same, but very similar to the gorgeous folded hills in Kaneohe where, when it rains, there are a thousand waterfalls. But I lapse into reverie. Ahem.
The kids are the saving grace of this movie. There’s a bratty 10-year-old who speaks her mind, a bratty 16-year-old who grows up all at once and becomes her Dad’s confidante and companion in arms in the war against the Speers, and a teenaged boy who is also bratty, but who grows on you as the movie goes along. He’s funny and dorky and kind, a sweet combination.
Mr. Clooney is nice to look at, of course. And he has a lot of lines in this movie, which all by itself makes it better than the awful movie The American we saw–but barely heard–him in last year. He’s sweetly emotive when he says good-bye to his wife. Convincingly at his wits’ end trying to deal with his daughters. All of which is something, because we don’t typically think of Mr. Clooney as a family man.
One other thing that struck me as odd was that Matt & Crew leave Elizabeth after she’s been taken off life support. They fly to Kauai. They go to the beach. They attend meetings. They visit the ancestral lands. They sneak up on strangers. My husband has never been in a coma, but if he were, and if the ventilator were removed, and he could die at any moment, I’m just thinking I would be there, not running around to business meetings or hanging out at the beach. It seemed weird to me is all, the timing. All those things should have happened prior to the removal of the ventilator, as in, “Sure, Doc, you can take her off life support, but can you wait two weeks, so I can go to Kauai and hang with my cousins and hunt down my wife’s lover?”
In the end, of course, they’re all gathered in the room at Queen’s Hospital. They say sweet good-byes. Then they go home, watch March of the Penguins and eat ice cream.