Review: 'The Descendants' has Oscar written all over it

There's a deceptive breeziness to "The Descendants," a sense of ease at even the most uneasy times.

It probably has to do with all the Hawaiian shirts, a lot to do with George Clooney's naturally amiable persona, and mostly to do with director Alexander Payne, who's unique comic-tragic point of view has been missing from theaters since 2004's "Sideways."

Somehow Payne, who adapted Kaui Hart Hemmings' novel along with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, transforms a story of death, betrayal, potential environmental rape and family dysfunction into an entertaining film that also manages to be emotionally revealing.

That result will almost surely net best picture and director Oscar nominations, as well as a best actor nod for Clooney.

Clooney plays Matt King, born into a wealthy Hawaiian family but a working lawyer nonetheless. King's wife has suffered an accident and is in a coma, likely to die. He has to help his rebellious teen daughter Alexandra (an exceptional Shailene Woodley) and younger daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) face this fact.

That would be burden enough, but Matt is also brokering a deal to sell a massive family land holding to real estate developers. It's a move sure to make a wide range of lazy relations even richer, but it's putting a price on paradise.

Then comes a final complication: Matt finds out his comatose wife had been having an affair before her accident. And suddenly he's on a mission to find and confront her lover.

Payne balances all these elements with his typical odd and oblique grace, and the story is moved along by a number of oddball characters.

There's Alexandra's goofball boyfriend, Sid (Nick Krause), who somehow tags along through most of the film; Matthew Lillard as Brian, the wife's lover; Judy Greer as Brian's sweet-hysterical wife; Robert Forster as Matt's cranky father-in-law; Beau Bridges as a kicked-back, money-hungry cousin; the list goes on.

And yet the film never feels overstuffed or weighed down. It's that breeziness factor, a hallmark of Payne's style, which perfectly suits Clooney's talent for mixing the comic and serious.

In tandem they deliver one of the year's best films, a bubbly meditation on family and responsibility that weighs just enough to matter.

'The Descendants'

GRADE: A-

Rated R for language, including some sexual references

Running time: 115 minutes

tlong@detnews.com

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