336. The Descendants (2011)

Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller

Director: Alexander Payne

Running Time: 115 mins

The Descendants is an American film about a man who reunites with his two daughters after his wife is involved in a life-threatening accident, and while dealing with an important deal to sell off family land, he struggles to come to terms with the secrets his wife had been hiding from him throughout her life.

I really enjoyed this film. With a very similar atmosphere to 50/50, it managed to balance comedy with a very serious and emotional story extremely well.

Although the first phase of the film was nothing particularly special, I thought that it was enjoyable to see this man coming into the world of parenting, and going mad at having to deal with these mad children of his, as well as some crazy and in my opinion extremely irritating friends and relatives. As well as finding out his wife had been cheating on him, everything was up against this character in the film, but that gave it quite a funny, yet still interesting atmosphere.

Of course, coming towards the end of the film, with the inevitable demise of the man’s wife, the story became much more serious, more emotional, more dramatic and just fascinating to watch, being one of the saddest, yet still strangely entertaining (if it’s possible to comprehend that) endings I’ve seen in a while, and because of this balance, I’ll give this a 7.8.