The Descendants

We have put this off and put this off because it's George and well, it can't possibly be any good, can it? Eventually we cracked. It's been nominated you know and so has George.

The Descendants is theoretically a film about a land deal because Matt King (George Clooney), a workaholic lawyer in Hawaii, is the sole trustee of a plot of land that has been in his family for ages. He and his cousins have to decide who to sell the untouched land to before the trust becomes dissolved in seven years time or they could of course do the unspeakable and leave it unspoilt.

You can probably guess how that turns out but it’s all a bit incidental really, the deal is just a side show in the film. The main plot centres around King’s thrill seeking wife (because he is so dull) who suffers a serious head injury in a powerboat accident. Now King not only has to deal with a wife in a coma but he’ll have to try to communicate with his daughters as well. Scary.

His youngest, Scottie (Amara Miller), has started to go off the rails and is acting up at school whilst Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) has been off them for some time, moving on to drugs and alcohol. King hops on a plane to bring her back from her boarding school, which is on a different island. Unfortunately, the best bit of the film, where he gets his drunken rambunctious eldest daughter on to the plane and then all the way home is cruelly edited out. All we see is him carrying her up the stairs to her bedroom. Cop out. That could have been good.

Then oddly from struggling as the self-confessed ‘backup parent’ remarkably, twenty minutes or so later, the entire family are getting along like a house on fire.

There are plenty of unbelievable moments like that but also some good bits too. There’s a strong scene where he has to tell Alexandra that her mother isn’t going to make it and according to her living will, they will have to take her off life support. Then Alexandra drops her own bombshell; that her mother was having an affair.

Faced with this knowledge, King does not go off the rails or go off to find the man to punch his lights out, as he would have done in many films. Instead we are asked to believe that yes King would want to track down his wife's lover but only to give the man a chance to say goodbye to his mistress. That may be sweet but it’s also slightly insane. At best, wouldn’t you send him an email?

So the whole family, along with Alexandra's annoying friend Sid (Nick Krause) who thinks her Grandma's Alzheimer's is hilarious, embark on one those road trips that America films are so fond of. Sid’s reason for being there is revealed towards the end, when you’re well sick of him, but even that’s an odd moment, where King seems lost for words or just lost and the moment is, well, lost.

Ultimately nothing really happens. When King finally confronts the man, again it’s all so, well nice. The whole film is like that, so lightweight, inconsequential. It’s another film where I was itching to amend the screenplay. In the end, little of it is really believable. Even his wife's eventual death isn't sad because at no point do we really see her alive nor are we given any indication that she could survive.

I can't help thinking that if someone like Mike Leigh had restaged this in some rundown housing estate in the UK with a bit of ‘kitchen sink realism’ we might have had something.

So is Clooney any good? Is he worthy of his many nominations? Not especially, he’s ok. Clooney does what Clooney does but he's been better.

It’s not a bad film, just nothing to get excited about. It’s got a sort of a RomCom feel to it; only without the Rom or the Com. I ought to say here that my partner loved it but for me... nah.

Happy-Go-Lucky

Tonight's film is Happy-Go-Lucky (with hyphens), the latest film from Mike Leigh.

Poppy Cross (Sally Hawkins) is thirty and a Primary School teacher working in London. Her approach to life is to not take anything too seriously or preferably not seriously at all. Of course there's nothing wrong in being upbeat but she is annoyingly cheerful, far too 'up' for her own good and it actually makes her into an immensely irritating individual, along with her equally exasperating friends and her sisters. However once you get past your initial annoyance at her, the film grabs you as it contrasts Poppy with the other characters in the film and their different approaches to life.

Her younger sister is very downbeat with exams looming and pulls no punches with her comments. Her other sister has settled down, got married, is pregnant, has a house and a pension but is bitterly jealous of Poppy's freedom. Her fellow teachers have equally dull lives. Her headmaster's weekly highlight is a Flamenco class hosted by a teacher with men issues. Another teacher, Tash is swamped by the demands of her large family.

Despite being supposedly happy with her lot, Poppy has no boyfriend, which is presumably because she's simply unliveable with. Less clear is why her saner flatmate Zoë (Alexis Zegerman) is single.



She also doesn't drive; instead she cycles everywhere. The reason for this, I assume, is because she is incapable of taking anything seriously it makes her un-teachable when it comes to driving. This is proven when, after the theft of her bike, she decides to learn.

Her policy in life seems to be to try and make everyone else happy but that is not a challenge she is set to win when faced with Scott, her practically psychopathic driving instructor (Eddie Marsan). Scott is the exact opposite of happy. He's an angry, frustrated, lunatic of a man tortured by his past. He berates her for wearing heels and for not concentrating. She dangerously pushes her luck too far with him. An oddity in the film is that we are told her driving lessons cost £22.50, yet Poppy always pays in notes and never receives any change. I wonder why she's tipping him?



Her urge to do good and make people happy takes her into some dangerous situations such as when she befriends a homeless man but also reaps dividends when she correctly diagnoses a boy at school who has trouble at home and she calls in a social worker. Bizarrely the social worker asks her out. Seemingly not being satisfied dealing with troubled children he also fancies a go at the not-so-grown-up Poppy.

It all makes for very watchable viewing. There's some great scenes, one of Poppy in colourful tights and a g-string getting her back sorted by a physiotherapist, springs to mind.

Regardless of what happens in her life Poppy never stops smiling. Her attitude, irritating though it can be, is probably a lot better than the approach taken by other people in her life and that’s perhaps the point Mike Leigh is trying to make.

An excellent film.