The Descendants is set in Hawaii and focuses on the people that are there all year round.

They live there, go to school there and, most importantly for this film, they were born there.

Matt King is a Hawaiian lawyer who is descended from the last Hawaiian princess and now is the sole trustee to 25,000 acres of land on one the Hawaiian islands.

Se t to sell the land (with his family) to a local property developer, Matt’s wife Elizabeth is involved in a boating accident and is in a coma in hospital.

Matt also discovers his wife was having an affair and sets out to confront her lover, with the support of his 17-year-old daughter Alexandra. Along the way he is also trying to figure out how to take better care of his 10-year-old daughter Scottie.

What is engaging about this film is the amount of complexities the plot throws up.

Matt is forced to deal with Elizabeth’s family as well as his own family who are pressuring him to sell the land trust.

With the added surprise of his comatose wife’s secret affair and the difficulties his daughters are having with their mother’s condition, Matt has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

George Clooney takes on the character of Matt King very well.

He injects his own humour into the more unique situation but all the while remaining solemn and conflicted.

Also impressive is young actress Shailene Woodley as Matt’s daughter Alexandra.

Woodley is most well known for her role in television series The Secret Life of an American Teenager but does so well in this role as an emotionally repressed teenager that The Descendants could be her ticket to the big time.

Clooney and Woodley work well together, with the father-daughter relationship involving a begrudging respect, family love and a duty to care for young Scottie.

Written and directed by Alexander Payne (writer and director of Sideways, About Schmidt and Election), The Descendants shows us just how complicated family life can be as well as reminding us how lucky we can be not being in the situation of this film’s plot.

Payne’s film is real and it is refreshing to see characters we truly care about on the silver screen.

The Verdict: 4 stars.

- The Descendants (M) is now showing at Bendigo Cinemas. See page 3 of the Bendigo Advertiser for details. Follow film reviewer Chris Pedler on Twitter @FilmNerdChris.