Super Frat

George Clooney cranks out another well made flick.  I have to respect that he doesn’t usually let his ego overwhelm a story or a movie.  He know his role and allows all the other actors to have important scenes too, so it feels like he’s part of a cast rather than swinging his movie star weight around.

Clooney plays Matt King, a lawyer whose wife is in a coma.  The secrets of King’s troubled marriage come out through his daughter, Alex (Shailene Woodley) and the events of the film.  King is also a descendent of Hawaiian royalty and is in the middle of selling a huge track of prime real estate so that he and his cousins will stay stinking rich.  But when his marriage woes come to the surface and other events that I don’t want to give away, he’s forced to make some choices.  Mary Birdsong (of Reno 911!) and Rob Huebel (of The Human Giant) play King’s couple friends.

The drama and the pacing are nice and there are only a few contrived moments for the sake of the plot.  I guess I came out of the movie kind of unsatisfied because I was expecting more of a quirky comedy and instead got a lot of family drama.  It all felt a little too real from my perspective, which is kind of a backhanded compliment I suppose.  The reality of a family pulling close together because of an ailing relative hits a little too close to home for me, as I’ve been in that situation too often.  I’d rather see giant robots beat the crap out of each other.

But if you like well done drama, you can do far, far worse than the Descendants.  I give it 7 keggers out of 10, although without my bias, I’m sure someone else would give it an 8 or 9.