AFF11 – Let Go/The Descendants

LET GO (2011)

Directed by: Brian Jett
Written by: Brian Jett

Walter Dishman (David Denman who played Skip the demon on Angel) is a parole officer who is about to change his entire life. He just got three parolees who are going to help him, even if none of them know it yet.

Darla DeMint (Gillian Jacobs) is cold-hearted bitch who uses her hotness to get her way, then dumps the men who fell in love with her. The last one gave her a ring that she then tried to sell on e-Bay. Unfortunately for her, it was stolen.

Kris Styles (Kevin Hart) is a former doctor who committed a white-collar crime. Now he has to get a job to not break parole. The thing is, he doesn’t need a job. He’s got all the money he needs…if only his wife was still around.

Artie Satz (Ed Asner who, sadly, sounded like he was being read his lines a lot of the time) is a lifer. He just got out of prison after a long career robbing banks. Now what’s an old guy to do?

Of course, Darla starts to use her feminine wiles on Walter and he falls for it. He starts hanging out with her during his off time. Kris goes from job to humiliating job. Artie thinks about going back to the life.

Oh yeah. Walter is married…a fact that the filmmakers barely even register for us until it’s convenient to the story. Unfortunately, it starts to make Walter look like a terrible person because his wife is a perfectly nice lady. Nice to look at, too. As a matter of fact, I didn’t really like anyone in this movie but her. Artie was an asshole, Darla was a bitch (who started to change for no apparent reason) and Kris didn’t handle some of his jobs well. (Ok, some of them I totally understand. But the parking attendant job? Totally could’ve saved that.) And tell me again why I’m supposed to feel sorry for a guy who cheated Blue Cross or Medicare out of millions of dollars? Another insurance company I would totally be down for, but not those two. That’s like stealing from a charity.

This is one of those movies that tries to be everything and only really succeeds at a couple of them. It’s an ok character study, but that’s about it. It’s not particularly romantic. It’s not particularly funny. It’s not particularly dramatic. It’s not even very good at the social commentary about the prison system. I’ve seen it before and it was usually better.

Not particularly good, unfortunately.

THE DESCENDANTS (2011)

Directed by: Alexander Payne
Written by: Alexander Payne/Nat Faxon/Jim Rash
Based on book by: Kaui Hart Hemmings

Alexander Payne has a very interesting formula. Take a likeable actor (Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick, Jack Nicholson, Paul Giamatti) and saddle them with a pretty unlikeable character. Turn that character’s world on its head about 15 times. Then throw about a ton of narration over everything.

Throughout my time in film school, I was always told “No narration! It’s a crutch!” I would love for someone to tell Payne that. And then I would love for him to laugh in their faces. His movies fucking work. And they work perfectly.

Matt King (George Clooney) is a Hawaiian lawyer whose family has owned a giant plot of land for generations. It’s part of his heritage, but now it’s time to give it up. He and his cousins have seven years to sell the land or they have to break up the trust that owns it.

Meanwhile, Matt’s wife is dying of injuries sustained in a boating accident. She’s been in a coma for weeks and is not going to pull through. After dragging his oldest daughter, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), out of reform school, she tells him that she caught her mom with another man (Matthew Lillard, looking for the first time like an adult).

Queue the journey. Matt, Alexandra, younger daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) and Alexandra’s dumbass boyfriend Sid (local boy, Nick Krause) head out to find this guy and confront him while trying to figure out how to tell the rest of the family about the impending death.

Everything about this movie is pretty amazing. Alexander Payne has yet to make a bad film and this keeps that record going. It’s funny, sad, thoughtful and perfectly acted by everyone. His movies are always peopled with folks that we wouldn’t want to hang out with, but MAN do we ever want to see movies about them. Matt King is no exception. He’s not exactly the best dad, hasn’t always been there for his daughters or his wife. Luckily, he’s an amazing subject for a film. It certainly doesn’t hurt that George Clooney is on the top of his game here. This very well could be his best performance yet. (You have no idea how heartbreaking it is to see that man cry.)

Of all of Payne’s films, this is probably the most beautifully shot. Not only does he show us the beauty of Hawaii (and there are some shots that make me want to go there tomorrow), but he shows us the mundane parts, too. The opening shots are of the cities that we never see: the traffic, the office buildings, the suburbs. It’s all there, too. We just don’t know about it because Hawaii is “Paradise.”

By the end of the movie, like all of Payne’s movies, we love the characters and Hawaii…even dumb ol’ Sid. Against all odds, we want this family to go on forever. And we wouldn’t mind if the movie was about three more hours long. We could watch them all learn to forgive each other all over again.

Watch for Beau Bridges basically playing his brother and Robert Forster playing himself.