George Clooney gets angsty in The Descendants trailer

The Descendants , Alexander Payne's adaptation of the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, has been nestled quietly off the radar for some time now, which is a surprise given the talent involved.

That lack of awareness is set to change with the new trailer that's just landed on Apple.

George Clooney stars as Matt King as a wealthy Hawaiian landowner, whose leisurely life is thrown into turmoil when his wife falls into a coma after a boating accident.

While trying to connect with his two daughters, he also has to come to terms with the fact that his unconscious wife may not be the woman he thought she was.

Despite the tragic premise, the book actually found time for plenty of humour, and it looks like Alexander Payne has done a decent job of translating that to the screen.

But seriously, would we expect anything less from tragi-comic king Payne, whose back catalogue features painfully bittersweet bloke-dissections About Schmidt and Sideways , and sharply incisive high school comedy Election ?

It should also be fun to see Clooney playing it distinctly uncool as the floundering, cuckolded father at the mercy of his demanding daughters and oddball extended family.

Enough talk, get watching the trailer now:

The Descendants is currently pencilled in for a December 2011 release date in the US, with no UK release currently laid down.