The Descendants

Actually, I can think of one other movie: Tom McCarthy’s “Win Win,’’ from earlier in the year - another human tragicomedy about the responsible American male under duress. Maybe you have to be in the right gender/age/income bracket to get the most meat from these films (and from their darker brother, Jeff Nichols’s “Take Shelter’’); probably not. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, though, that all these movies are arriving at a time when economic uncertainty has made the self-delusions of the average guy harder and harder to maintain.

Not that Matt King (George Clooney) is feeling the pinch. For one thing, he lives in Hawaii, which, even if he admits isn’t the paradise mainlanders think, is still Hawaii. For another, he and his many cousins are the descendants of the first white haoles who colonized the islands in the 19th century, so he’s more than well off - rich without being a jerk about it.

For a third thing, he looks like George Clooney, or a baggier, paunchier version of same. Matt’s the guy who had it all in youth, learned to appreciate it later in life, and still could use a good kick in the pants. The movie is more than happy to provide. When “The Descendants’’ opens, the hero’s wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), is lying comatose in a Honolulu hospital after a boating accident and Matt is rounding up his daughters, 16-year-old Alex (Shailene Woodley) and 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller). It’s not an overstatement to say that all three women are complete strangers to him.