A man's wife is in a coma and it's time to take her off life support. A man's wife has been cheating on him and he's actively trying to find the other man she came to love. A man is in the midst of an enormous business deal in which he's on the brink of selling an enormous family estate of undeveloped land to eager buyers. On their own, each of these plots would make for a run-of-the-mill movie. Combine them, though, and make it so that the man is played by George Clooney, and set the whole thing in Hawaii, and you can consider me intrigued.
I liked this movie a lot. It was well-paced and confident in its tone and its characters. Clooney was great, doing his "calm under pressure" dry humor thing while his unfaithful wife was dying in a hospital and his in-laws were giving him hell for it. The Hawaiian setting and music gave everything some added levity. Toss in some game performances from Beau Bridges, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, and - most of all - Shailene Woodley, and you've got yourself a real doozy of a film.
A few months ago, in my post on The Artist, I lamented how generally terrible 2011 was for movies, but admitted I couldn't think of a more "Best Picture"-worthy candidate than that movie. I liked Drive a whole lot more, but that was never going to win the most prestigious award in film. The Descendants, on the other hand, was nominated. Two and a half years later, I say it deserved the win.
Trev, you had said in a comment on the same post that you disliked Alexander Payne and had therefore avoided this movie. You know more about movies than I ever will, but I have to say I really liked this one, for whatever it's worth to you.
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