George Clooney, left, and Shailene Woodley in “The Descendants.” (AP)
Great movies like “The Descendants’’ don’t only take an audience on an absorbing journey — in the hands of a master director like Alexander Payne and a superb cast headed by George Clooney, you feel like you’ve come to know the characters’ entire lives in the span of two hours.
Expertly mixing tears and laughs with the sort of alchemy not seen since “Terms of Endearment,’’ this superbly written, directed, acted, and yes, Oscar-friendly movie perfectly captures the blackly comic insanity that can overtake a family forced to confront an impending death.
In this case, it’s the wife of Clooney’s Matt King, who falls into an irreversible coma following a boating accident in Hawaii, where Matt’s family — descended from kings and missionaries — has lived for generations.
He may be a lawyer, but she’s left explicit legal instructions requiring him and her doctors to have the plug pulled within a certain time frame.
That turns out to be the easier part for Matt.
Much more challenging for the self-described “backup parent’’ and workaholic is reaching out to his long-neglected daughters, ages 10 and 17, and helping them through their mother’s final days. He really hasn’t a clue about how to be a parent.
At the same time, Matt is facing another deadline.
He’s the sole trustee for a huge tract of virgin land on Kauai that his cousins, who stand to make a windfall, are pressing him to sell for a lucrative development deal.
Matt’s younger daughter, Scottie (Amara Miller), is a brat, but older sibling Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) — who’s high when he retrieves her from a boarding school — is far more troubled.
It turns out Alexandra had a huge argument with her mother during her last visit home.
And then the teenager drops a real bombshell on poor Matt: It was because Mom was cuckolding him (I’m not giving away anything that isn’t in the trailer). Matt goes crazy upon receiving this news.
So Matt, the girls and Alexandra’s seemingly dopey slacker pal (Nick Krause, very funny) — between final visits to the hospital (depicted more realistically than in any film I’ve seen) and breaking the sad news to friends and family — take off for Kauai in search of his comatose wife’s lover.
Clooney has never been better than in this wholly unfamiliar guise of a cheated-upon family man. One of the world’s sexiest bachelors, he may well win an Oscar for making you believe his fed-up wife would prefer the charms of the vastly less handsome Matthew Lillard.
The razor-sharp, pitch-perfect script by Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash — adapted from a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings — makes it clear that Matt and his wife had drifted apart some time before the accident.
More telling detail is provided by the wife’s angry father, superbly played by Robert Forster — who unloads a lifetime of resentment that Matt, though comfortably well off, stubbornly refused to improve their lives by tapping into a considerable inheritance.
There’s not a wasted moment or a misstep in a film that skillfully weaves its two story lines into a twin climax that’s somehow both inevitable and surprising, as well as thoroughly satisfying.
Payne’s first film since “Sideways’’ is brimming with terrific performances, including Woodley (of TV’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager’’) and Beau Bridges, as a member of Matt’s extended family whose greed is hiding behind a laid-back manner.
Perhaps the most delightful surprise is Judy Greer, whose best-friend parts have invariably been better than the romantic comedies in which she frequently appears.
Given a rare dramatic role as Lillard’s cheated-upon wife, she steps up to the plate and knocks it completely out of the park. Like the movie, Clooney and Payne, she will not be forgotten during awards season.
“The Descendants’’ also makes brilliant, often ironic, use of Hawaiian settings so gorgeous it will likely trigger a tourism boom. I’m highly recommending the only movie I’ve given four stars to so far this year.
lou.lumenick@nypost.com