A film like this, and its ilk, is not that different from bad hardcore pornography. Both try to elicit primal emotions – to cry, to cum – stripping down everything to maximalize the central purpose, be it that every moment Clooney’s character interacts with his family and children, for the occasional jokes, is really just to push the central drama rather add to them as characters, to the haggard nature of the adult characters to emphasise that ‘this’ is a sad film. What happens is that, like bad porn, it is oppressive to sit through, terribly put together and ugly visually (with its horrible greyish tone and a camera that makes everyone, especially Matthew Lillard, a grotesque mess than a person, The Descendants has some of the most off-putting cinematography in a high budget film I have seen in a long time), abrasive in its attempts to force fed you metaphorically what it wants you to feel rather than letting it happen naturally, and depressing to view, not in the way it intends but the way I felt in having to force myself through it in a cinema. Despite every moment that did shine – the appearance of Robert Forrester there, a good joke here – they end up being like the a great flute player who is drowned out in an orchestra that cannot hold a note between them all, the sum of all the film’s parts the most forced and arbitrary drama possible, never feeling like its actually touching on the issues of mortality it has sincerely but just for the sake of it.