Having grown up watching George Clooney play charming characters to be swooned at by older ladies (Ocean's Eleven, those coffee adverts, ER), I always thought he was a bit of a frothy actor (perhaps like his coffee ads LOL). However I now take that back as his performance in The Descendants proved that he can do more impressive and deeper characters than I had originally thought. I also was a bit dubious as the director Alexander Payne made Sideways and About Schmidt, neither of which I particularly liked. BUT I would now fully recommend going to see this film.
The idea behind the film, which they pretty much outline in the trailer in the 'Everyone thinks everything is so great in Hawaii but it's not etc', I thought was pretty original and something I can relate to. I spend most of the time thinking that every other country is somehow better than ours and nothing bad would ever happen there (countries I believe this about include France, Barbados, St Lucia, New Zealand and Australia). So it was interesting and probably timely to consider that maybe life isn't a perfect utopia in another country that isn't the U.K.
The sad subject matter, the protagonist's wife is in a coma, juxtaposed against the beautiful backdrop of Hawaii, people wearing Hawaiian shirts and idyllic ukulele songs proved to make the events more moving as they unfolded throughout the film, yet somehow the film didn't end up being too cheesy. I also thought although Clooney has been nominated for an Oscar, the actress, Shailene Woodley, who played his daughter was much more interesting to watch and gave a pretty good portrayal of the classic rebellious teen. Although she does look a lot like Tulisa from X Factor which is kind of unnerving.
I thought the film dealt with the complex relationships within a family dealing with death realistically, and was a good mix of sad and funny, with some laugh out loud moments. Although it's not life changing, I enjoyed watching it and came out feeling somewhere between sad and happy, in a good way.
STARZ: 3/5
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