Aloha, patriarch Clooney

In theaters Friday: I Melt with You, New Year’s Eve, The Sitter, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Young Adult [limited]

New on DVD/Blu-ray: The Debt, The Hangover Part II, The Help, Mr. Popper’s Penguins

If anyone was in doubt about George Clooney’s ability to transition from suave, sarcastic, and often rakish leading man to playing a grayer, more rough-hewn elder statesman, and the big D “Dad” on screen, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, a moving, whimsical portrait of a Hawaiian land baron marooned in crises both familial and fiscal, ought to change their minds faster than a Mai Tai.

Clooney plays Matt King, an attorney who, along with his many cousins, has inherited hundreds of millions of dollars worth of prime, untouched earth on the lush Hawaiian islands. As a deal to collectively sell their family property to an ambitious commercial developer who will turn the land into the next great resort getaway approaches, King’s wife suffers a tragic boating accident that puts her in a coma. Forced to face his many issues with her alone as well as a dark secret and the two defiant young daughters he has all but neglected for his business, King must pull his family and his head together in order to do what is best for his children, his marriage and one of the last untapped patches of Hawaiian bliss.

Payne, a somewhat unlikely Oscar darling—who previously directed the underrated Election and the overrated Sideways—benefits just as much as Clooney does from having Kaui Hart Hemming’s multi-layered and poignant novel for source material and sandy beaches and emerald cliffs as an overtly serene setting. Finally Payne’s often milquetoast cinematography is a least given something attractive to focus on, while the voice, the anchor of this film rests completely on the suddenly adult shoulders of one George Clooney. Though perhaps just a hair overlong, The Descendants nevertheless proves to be a worthwhile adventure of the spirit, one filled with tumultuous moments of juvenile absurdity, heartbreak and a seemingly endless streak of dark humor.

If Clooney doesn’t earn an Oscar nomination for this film, I’ll write my next column in a grass skirt. Together, he and Payne prove that hell and paradise can be one in the same, and even though Oahu is a small island, it has plenty of real estate for both.