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Movie Review – THE DESCENDANTS

[Image source: Wikipedia]
*ing George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller

Before posting the review, the figures first:

The movie has grossed $ 51 M (Rs.270 Crs) as on Jan 22, 2012 in the US since its release in mid-November 2011.

It has been nominated for the Academy Awards in the following categories

• Best Picture
• Best Actor in a Leading Role, George Clooney
• Best Director, Alexander Payne
• Best Adapted Screenplay, Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
• Best Editing, Kevin Tent
• It has won the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama) & Best Actor in a Leading role – George Clooney (no surprises here!)

Source: Official website – The Descendants

The Story:

The movie revolves around a hot shot Real Estate agent Matt King (George Clooney) with a thriving legal practice business in Hawaii. His wife meets with an unfortunate accident and the movie is all about how the agent brings his family together – He has his younger daughter aged 10 years (Amara Miller) to take care of and his eldest of 17 (Shailene Woodley) is away at a college and not exactly on friendly terms with her parents. Its about how the family comes together and copes with this real time crisis and also about certain skeletons that tumble out of the cupboard during the process.

My view:

The movie released in India on January 26, 2012. I spent my Saturday night i.e. 28th January 2012 watching this movie at Big Cinema at R-Mall (not to mention the 180 bucks that I shelled out for the theatre ticket and Rs. 170 on refreshments!)

One would expect any movie with such a star cast boasting of the ever green George Clooney and with the number of awards/listings pinned to its chest to be a houseful one for atleast the first week if not for an entire month. However reality hit hard when the 3 of us (which can be read as 3 Idiots – hey no offense guys who were with me) reached the theatre at 10:45 pm for the 11 pm start. Once the movie started till the end, there were only exactly a dozen who were present!

The reasons are not hard to imagine.

The movie seemed more a portion of the numerous Saas-Bahu operas running on Indian television all week long with no beginning no end. George Clooney seems to have put in quite a lot into this role what with Penguin style walk(remember the Batman movies) and his Forrest Gump like scene when he runs to his friends place to check out on a piece of startling information provided by his daughter (Don’t want to spoil the fun for all those Descendant & Clooney fans!). Every time they came up with a close up shot of Clooney, It seemed that I was staring into the face of Mr. Wagle (Anjan Srivastava from Wagle ki Duniya!) ace cartoonist R.K. Laxman’s Common man epitomized on television. The movie just about wanders along predictable lines with a little bit of forced buffoonery in a supposedly serious picture. It has the usual parenting scenes wherein Clooney does not seem to have his daughters under control and how they seem to be in a state of constant disagreement.

However one needs to give full marks for the performances of Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller for doing full justice to their roles and playing them out well.

Last but not the least, My award for Best Actor in The Descendants would be for Patricia Hastie in the character of Elizabeth King, Clooney’s wife who plays the role of a comatose wife to be taken off life support!

I thought the movie to be a one time watch. Do share your reviews and opinions with us.