Alexander Payne, now 50, has earned a reputation as one of the top Writer/Directors in the USA on the back of just four films. His fifth, The Descendants, starring George Clooney, who is also 50, is unlikely to dent that reputation.

Like About Schmidt (2002) and Sideways (2004), which won an Academy Award for its script (co-written with Jim Taylor), The Descendants is a comedy about an ordinary, flawed and unfulfilled middle aged man at a crisis point in his life.  He goes on a road trip that closes old doors and opens new ones. All of Payne’s films have a strong sense of place. In The Descendants, the contrasting islands of Honolulu and Kauai are not only central to the plot but silent characters that steal the show. If The Descendants isn’t up there with About Schmidt and Sideways, it is still one of the most entertaining and beautifully made films around.

Matt King (George Clooney) is a successful property lawyer living in a comfortable house in Honolulu. Married to his college sweet-heart, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), with two healthy daughters, Matt seems to have it all.  But, as he tells us in a first-person narration, you have to be nuts to think that living in Hawaii is Paradise.  Matt has some heavy weights on his shoulders and doesn’t yet know the half of it.

A descendant of the marriage between a native Hawaiian princess and a white, 19^th immigrant businessman, Matt and his cousins have inherited 25,000 acres of lush, pristine land around the secluded Hanalei Bay on Kauai.  As the legal trustee of a land trust that is about to expire to the Rule of Perpetuities, Matt has to decide whether or not to rubber stamp the popular option of selling to Kauai-based developer Don Holitzer.

With this decision looming, Matt learns that his wife, who is in a coma following a water-skiing accident, will not recover. But Matt himself is in a metaphorical coma.  He barely knows his two out-of-control daughters, ten-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and seventeen-year-old Alex (British rising star, Shailene Woodley), and is at a loss to deal with their inexplicable behaviour. And as he sits by his wife’s bed, vowing to be a better husband if she recovers, he’s ignorant of her affair with real estate developer Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard).  It is only when Matt travels to Kauai to find Speer, with his daughters and Alex’s goofy, but intelligent boyfriend, Sid (Nick Krause) in tow, that he learns that Speers is related to Holitzer. His cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges) is amazed that Matt hadn’t known of the connection or to what extent Speers would profit if the land were sold to Holitzer. 

The climactic confrontation scene at Speer’s holiday property is one of the finest in the film, followed by another, in which the family take a final look at their heritage.  Here, Scottie points out that unlike her older sister, she has never been camping on the land. After this, we can place our bets: will it be the wronged husband, the level-headed lawyer, the popular trustee or the proud descendant, mindful now of his own descendants, who makes the decision?

Beautifully shot by Sideways’ cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, with wonderful acting from the entire cast, Payne’s impeccable direction and attention to detail, and refreshingly unpredictable story, it’s impossible not to like and admire the Descendants.  But certain nagging shortcomings in the script, written by Payne, with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash let it down. This might, in part, be because the script is based on a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings.

The sudden change in the daughters is a notable lapse. Granted, Scottie’s behaviour can be traced to her mother’s coma and Alex’s to her mother’s secretive affair, but their transformation is still too sudden and complete. Clooney portrays Matt with all the subtly and credibility of a master, but his character is less interesting than Payne’s other protagonists.  The schmaltzy ending, too, is a disappointment and is too lame and whimsical for a film by Alexander Payne.