George Clooney and the Descendants

The yawning blue seas of Hawaii made a pleasant change from the non-stop rain in Kildare.

Director Alexander Payne  allowed the camera to linger patiently on the heart stopping scenery while presenting a movie, with an entirely Hawiian composed backing track (adapted from the novel by

Hawaii author Kaui Hart Hemmings) that made me laugh and shed tears in almost the same scene.
The ever watchable George Clooney  plays attorney, wealthy landowner and detached father and husband Matt King, whose world is turned upside down when his wife suffers a tragic boating accident. The story twists when Matt discovers his now comatose wife has been having an affair and he heads off, two daughters and a friend on tow, to track down the adulterer.
 Slapstick and sadness weave tightly.
 The adulterer (played by Matthew Lilliard) is also married, with a friendly, attractive wife and two gorgeous young sons. Lilliard's  changing facial expression, from beaming smile to eye-widened horror, when Matt introduces himself with the words "I think you knew my wife", sent the cinema audience into howls of laughter. Seconds later when King updates him on his wife's comatose, dying state, silence fell again.
The scene where Matt says a heartwrenching goodbye to his comatose wife elicited a chorus of sniffing along my seat just moments after him generating laughs from a wry one liner.  A night of rollercoasting emotions.
Some nuggets of wisdom too:
 George Clooney's 
character, Matt King, on being the inheritor of large tracts of valuable land and the importance of being careful how you spend your wealth:
"You give your children enough money to do something but not enough to do nothing."