The Descendants (2011)
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Reviews Counted: 234
Fresh: 208 | Rotten: 26
Funny, moving, and beautifully acted, The Descendants captures the unpredictable messiness of life with eloquence and uncommon grace.
Average Rating: 8.9/10
Critic Reviews: 47
Fresh: 43 | Rotten: 4
Funny, moving, and beautifully acted, The Descendants captures the unpredictable messiness of life with eloquence and uncommon grace.
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Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 64,404
Movie Info
From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning Sideways, set in Hawaii, The Descendants is a sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic journey for Matt King (George Clooney) an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family's land handed down from Hawaiian royalty
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Cast
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George Clooney
Matt King -
Shailene Woodley
Alexandra, Alexandra... -
Amara Miller
Scottie, Scottie Kin... -
Judy Greer
Julie, Julie Speer -
Beau Bridges
Cousin Hugh, Hugh -
Nick Krause
Sid -
Patricia Hastie
Elizabeth King -
Matthew Lillard
Brian, Brian Speer -
Robert Forster
Scott, Scott Thorson -
Grace A. Cruz
Scottie's Teacher -
Kim Gennaula
School Counselor -
Karen Kuioka Hironag...
Barb Higgins -
Carmen Kaichi
Lani Higgins -
Kaui Hart Hemmings
Matt's Secretary Noe -
Matt Corboy
Cousin Ralph -
Matt Esecson
Cousin Hal -
Michael Ontkean
Cousin Milo -
Stanton Johnston
Cousin Stan -
Jonathan McManus
Cousin Six -
Hugh Foster
Cousin Wink -
Tiare R. Finney
Cousin Connie -
Tom McTigue
Cousin Dave -
Milt [Lewis] Kogan
Dr. Johnston -
Mary Birdsong
Kai Mitchell -
Rob Huebel
Mark Mitchell -
Laird Hamilton
Troy Cook -
Aileen "Boo" Arnold
Dorm Supervisor -
Esther Kang
Alex's Roommate -
Melissa Kim
Alex's Drunken Frien... -
Barbara Lee Southern
Alice "Tutu" Thorson -
Celia Kenney
Reina -
Matthew Reese
Buzz -
Zoel Turnbull
Hotel Clerk -
Linda Rose Herman
Grief Counselor -
Scott Michael Morgan
Barry Thorson -
Darryl K. Gonzales
Tahiti Nui Singer (K... -
Koko Kanealii
Tahiti Nui Singer (K... -
Romey "Keola" Yokota...
Tahiti Nui Singer (K...
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The Descendants Trailer & Photos
All Critics (235) | Top Critics (47) | Fresh (208) | Rotten (26) | DVD (8)
The Descendants is humane, decent, and close to real quality.
Top CriticPayne is an unobtrusive director, a filmmaker who lets the script do the walking - in this case, perhaps too much.
One of the year's best films, a bubbly meditation on family and responsibility that weighs just enough to matter.
In the hands of writer-director Alexander Payne, Clooney has rarely seemed so much at home.
In playing an everyman stranded between anger and duty, Clooney earns an emotional payoff that a lesser actor would simply demand.
With so many balls in the air the temptation is to rush from one plot strand to another, but Payne takes the opposite approach. He also captures the complexity of emotional reactions that grief stirs.
The Descendants is an exercise in why women are such horrible, despicable shrews. When this film isn't demonising its female characters for daring to be unhappy in their marriage, it's condescending them for showing too much emotion...
A truthful, warm-hearted, deeply moving film about loss, about death, about legacies and, yeah, family.
People looking for a good lei would be wise to say aloha to 'The Descendants,' Alexander Payne's Hawaiian-set luau in which laughter and tears combine for a cinematic feast.
A beautifully touching, tragic and amusing follow-up film from the director of Sideways.
The Descendants manages to even surpass those stratospheric expectations most fans will have walking into the theatre.
Like "Sideways" and "About Schmidt," "The Descendants" lets Alexander Payne show us the Other America and the Other Americans - little lives caught up in small but epic problems far away from the La La Land of Hollywood hype, sex and violence.
Each year there are usually one or two films that don't deserve all of the insane praise they get (last year's The Fighter is a prime example) and it looks like "The Descendants" is one for this year.
Understandable when dealing with Payne's typically directionless protagonists, The Descendants occasionally feels like it is unsure of where it's going, yet it still always ambles along at a pleasant pace regardless.
A thoroughly rewarding assembled-for-adults dramedy that benefits immensely from both its island locale and one of George Clooney's finest performances.
The Descendants is a devastating and rewarding emotional journey.
Will keep you soaked in its melancholy until the very end...
Sort of like a shotgun marriage between Jimmy Buffett and Harry Chapin.
There's some pretty tricky material for Payne and crew to navigate, but anchored by a terrific cast it's a journey of hurt and healing that lingers.
overrated, but not a bad movie
"The Descendants" goes on too long, but that's its only flaw. And frankly, I can see why Payne and his editor decided to go with this print instead of making some awfully tough decisions.
George Clooney gives a wonderful lead performance in his new film The Descendants but Clooney has always been more than just a handsome face, he's a proper movie star and in that old Hollywood tradition, he's also an everyman, one of us.
No doubt the awards hype around the film will get people into cinemas but it doesn't warrant the attention considering Payne's previous work and Clooney has put in much better performances.
Payne manages to give the film a lightness that makes it uplifting or at the least fulfilling, rather than depressing.
full review at Movies for the Masses
Audience Reviews for The Descendants
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Movies Like The Descendants
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- Matt King: Come after me if you want. It will just make us closer.
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- Matt King: You give your children enough money to do something, but not enough to do nothing.
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- Alexandra King: [Scottie presses the 'Adults Only' button and Alex grabs the remote away from her] No, you're not watching porn.
- Alexandra King: [to Sid] My dad watches porn.
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- Kai Mitchell: Matt, you're angry.
- Matt King: You have very keen powers of observation.
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- Scott Thorson: I am going to hit you.
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- Matt King: My friends on the mainland think just because I leave in Hawaii, I live in paradise, like a permanent vacation. We're all just out here, sipping Mai Tais, shaking our hips, catching waves. Are they insane? Do they think we are immune to life? How can they possibly think our famalies are less screwed up, our cancers less fatal, our heartache less painful?
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Foreign Titles
- The Descendants - Familie und andere Angelegenheiten (DE)
- Los descendientes (ES)
And, like his other films, it's a blend of humor and sadness, though I think this one might be the least funny, and the most emotionally stirring. It's rather depressing, but it's also quite real, which is what I love and hate about his films, since they can be really hard to watch at times, yet they are films that are must-sees.
The story here revolves around Matt King, a disillusioned workaholic lawyer in Hawaii who is forced to re-examine his life after his wife becomes comatose following a boating accident. Even before the accident he already had a lot on his plate: work consumes him, and, even more pressing, he has been wrestling with the decision to sell his family's land which had been handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries. That, and as he puts it, "I was the understudy parent", so his relations with his 10 and 17 year-old daughters isn't exactly wonderful.
Like I said, despite the heavy plot, which is one heck of an emotional roller coaster, there are some wonderfully funny and wry moments, and some really finely observed moments in general. That, and Payne has one tremendous cast to work with. Clooney takes the lead and really sells the complexities of the situations that Matt finds himself dealing with. Amara Miller and especially Shailene Woodley are wonderful as his daughters, and I feel like this film will be to Woodley what Winter's Bone was for Jennifer Lawrence. And we can't forget the great supproting roles from familiar faces like Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, and Matthew Lillard, who surprisingly really nails a more dramatic role. I was amazed by his work. Nick Krause is also by far the primary comic relief here, though he also pulls off a really profound and poignant scene with Clooney, that, even though I kinda expected it, was still great when it happened.
When the end credits began to roll, I was stunned. I really wasn't sure I had felt about this movie, as it was a lot to take in. I was initially thinking that I would give it somewhere between a 4 and 5, but was honestly unsure about what it really deserved. Well, I slept on it, gave it some more thought, and, even though I gave this same grade to two other Payne films, it gets a 4.5 from me. I feel okay about this, but at the same time, I have a lingering thought in my mind that, while Payne's films do deserve this type of praise, I think I might be falling into that rut where, like other directors, I find it almost impossible to get too negative or grant that low of a score. I hope I'm wrong though, and that Alexander Payne really is one of the greatest directors of his time, and of all time.