MOVE REVIEW | The Descendants


The Descendants is a 2011 movie starring George Clooney and Shailene Woodley and tells the story of a family that is poised to sell a large tract of land in Hawaii. The deal will net them hundreds of millions of dollars, but as the purchase deadline approaches the family has to deal with an unexpected revelation about the mother who is in a coma after a boating accident.

The movie opens with George Clooney lifelessly phoning in a voiceover giving you background on events leading up to the start of the movie. That narration pops up regularly through the film’s runtime and drags down what is already a boring and depressing movie. As a result, the lighter comedic moments fall flat, I couldn’t get invested in the characters, and at times there were Home and Away levels of forced drama.

And then if all that’s not bad enough, the constant interstitials with sappy, tug at your heartstrings Hawaiian music got to be so annoying, like HEY GUYS, WE’RE IN HAWAII, DID WE TELL YOU? HAWAIIII.

After watching this, I find it hard to believe that this was up for Best Picture in the 2012 Oscars and that Clooney won Best Actor for it at the Golden Globes. Shailene Woodley however was really good and, I think, deserving of the awards attention she got.

It starts to pick up around half an hour from the end, but for me that was too late to save it. It’s not an awful movie, it’s just fine.