The Who2 Blog
What If I Just Don't Want to See 'The Descendants'?
If you had said a year ago, "Alexander Payne's first movie since Sideways, starring George Clooney, and set in Hawaii," I would have said "I'll be there!"
But now that very movie is here -- The Descendants -- and I just don't want to see it. I don't want to see George Clooney fight with his emotionally wounded teenage daughters. I don't want to see lessons being learned. I don't want to hear that quirky indie movie music.
Payne and Clooney have terrific track records. The reviews are spectacular. I even like Beau Bridges. But I really, really don't want to see this movie. Does that make me a bad person?
2 comments
I know what you mean. I heard a good interview with Payne on the radio last month:
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/17/142309905/troubled-tropical-paradise-in-pa...
He sounds like a smart, thoughtful fellow. And he's got a great track record, and he makes good movies. But ELECTION is really the only one I feel like seeing more than once. CITIZEN RUTH has a certain charm, but it's pretty heavy handed. ABOUT SCHMIDT is another job well done... I just don't want to see it again.
I didn't see SIDEWAYS and don't really have much desire to see it. I think I was already feeling your Payne hesitations back then. I'm sure it's good, yeah yeah yeah.
And I'm sure the THE DESCENDANTS is a good movie.
But in the above radio interview, Payne makes the remark that he wants his movies to be as realistic as possible. On the one hand, that's terrific. I loved the production design in ABOUT SCHMIDT -- his house looked like a real house, not a movie version of a real house. On the other hand, I can see real life almost every day of the week.
I go to the movies for *heightened* reality. Where the people are more interesting to look at, where the explosions are bigger, where people take turns in conversation, where there's always a parking place right in front of where you're going and where everyone answers the phone on the first ring (unless there's a bomb somewhere).
Oh, and where beautiful women are always finding dumpy middle-aged guys interesting and sexy.
Dittoes, Rush.
I liked 'Sideways' a lot, both while I was seeing it and now as a kind of warm memory-of-a-good-time-at-the-movies. If you want a movie where "beautiful women are always finding dumpy middle-aged guys interesting and sexy," that's your film. Virginia Madsen falling for Paul Giamatti is pretty unbelievable and threatens to take down the whole movie -- although you're rooting for it at the same time, of course.
'Sideways' is a confirmation of what Joan Crawford or Greer Garson or whoever it was said about making movies: whatever else happens, if you can give people six memorable moments, you've got a good film. I can think of six memorable moments from that movie pretty easily, and I've only seen it once (and in snippets on TV).
They are: Giamatti stealing cash from his mom's drawer; Sandra Oh belting Thomas Haden-Church with a motorcycle helmet; the famous drinking-from-the-spit-bucket moment at the winery; "You didn't drink and dial, did you?"; Giamatti opening his bottle of expensive wine at a fast-food joint; Haden-Church running the car into the tree to cover up for his broken nose. That's pretty good on the memorable-movie scale.
My feelings about 'The Descendants' make me wonder if maybe I'm only willing to see George Clooney in certain roles. I've always appreciated his interest in taking a variety of roles, and I've felt with some slightly absurd pride that I was a Friend Of George, willing to see him in whatever. But now I think, no, I'm not really willing to see him in roles where he's a goof, or a struggling incompetent who sorta-triumphs in the end.
The NY Times review describes a moment where "Mr. Clooney slips on a pair of boat shoes and runs, like an angry, flightless bird, to a neighbor’s house" -- the moment shown in the trailer -- and I think, "Ugh." To channel a teenage girl for a moment, I just don't like him "that way."
That NY Times review also says that "Mr. Payne -- immeasurably aided by a dazzlingly gifted, doggedly disciplined cast -- nimbly sidesteps the sentimental traps that lurk within the film’s premise." Well, if he's sidestepping them so well, how come the trailer does nothing but *emphasize* the sentimental traps?
After writing this post I went to Wikipedia to see if they had the movie plot posted, and they do (spoilers!), and it sounds like the film is actually *riddled* with un-sidestepped sentimental traps.
Also, when a movie review says a cast is "dazzlingly gifted," I'm afraid I mark the film down two points. As you say, I want heightened reality movies, not thinking-about-how-gifted-the-cast-is movies.