IT’S more rewarding to ignore than give credence to the PR hyperbole accompanying Alexander Payne’s serio-comic family drama.

George Clooney plays Matt, lawyer, principal in a family trust of a large parcel of undeveloped Hawaiian real estate in the family for 150 years, whose wife Elizabeth, mother of daughters 17-year-old Alex and 10-year-old Scottie, lies in a terminal coma after a boating accident.

For his screenplay, Payne adapted a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings. The result doesn’t withstand close scrutiny as a study of a family coping with a pile of crises – internecine dispute among Matt’s siblings about who should be allowed to buy the land, an elder daughter at risk of going down bad developmental paths, a surprise discovery that Elizabeth has had an affair – stuff like mid-afternoon, network TV.

Clooney’s shift in character choice, perhaps in preparation for his advancing years, is a pleasure to watch. Running in shorts and sandals he reminded me of an edible aquatic water-bird unable to fly.

Shailene Woodley is impressive as Alex who after a behavioural sea-change becomes the staff propping up Matt when things get really bad.

Playing one of Matt’s siblings is the other, younger, Bridges brother Beau whose career always stood in the shadow of Jeff.

An element of the film worthy of note was how the parts of Hawaii where its permanent residents who drive its economy live, look much the same as Australian seaside communities.

At all cinemas