Downsizing

DOWNSIZING

Director : Alexander Payne
Year : 2018
Genre : Science Fiction
Rating : **

As a fan of his previous works, most notably 'Sideways' (2005) and 'Nebraska' (2013), I was greatly looking forward to director Alexander Payne's sci-fi satire 'Downsizing' but sadly, a lacklustre script and a terribly muddled story makes this the first true disappointment of 2018. Set in a near future riddled with pollution and air contamination, the film tells the story of Matt Damon's occupational therapist Paul who agrees to be shrunk down to a mere 5 inches as part of a breakthrough scientific experiment designed to drastically reduce humanity's carbon footprint. It's an interesting idea and Payne has a lot of fun with it - well at least for the first hour or so. Many clever jokes and sight gags are utilised in the scenes leading up to Paul's "downsizing" and the moments in which he and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) debate whether or not to go ahead with the irreversible procedure have a great deal of charm and wit to them.

However, once Paul is shrunk down to size and the film reveals it's trailer-spoiled twist, 'Downsizing' quickly runs out of steam and what began as a quirky, unique little gem rapidly turns into a very preachy, very unfocused mess. Rather than being the odd little sci-fi comedy the first 45 minutes promised, the film instead becomes a rather tedious romance regarding Paul and Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau) a Vietnamese refugee and activist who also serves as the housekeeper for his roguish Serbian neighbour Dusan (Christoph Waltz in a surprisingly one-note role). If there's one good thing to come out of the drudgery that is 'Downsizing', it would be the introduction of the talented and very likeable Chau who ultimately carries the emotional weight of the film. Her performance is spiky yet sensitive and her absence from the Oscar nominees list is one of the many glaring oversights of this years awards season.

The idea of a 5 inch Matt Damon is a comical one but for a movie that promises such a subversive concept, surprisingly very little feels new or original. Rarely do we see Damon or his shrunken associates from the perspective of the real world and the effect is that the miniaturised universe Payne so lovingly creates in the first act is quickly normalised. In other films which see people decreasing in size eg. 'Ant -Man' or 'Honey, I Shrunk The Kids', there is always a sense of relative scale as well as a consistent theme of threat from traditionally harmless things - bathtubs become raging torrents, mice become terrifying gigantic monsters and, most memorably, Thomas The Tank Engine becomes a rampaging smiling colossus. These are not only fun little visual jokes but they are also identifiable enough to help place the small character in our normal sized world. In 'Downsizing' however, the most dangerous thing Paul and Ngoc Lan Tran face are a bunch of harmless butterflies. In fact, the irony is that the outcome of the movie would have been the same no matter what size the characters were so the shrinking plotline is ultimately completely pointless!

'Downsizing' is a film of two very different halves. The first is a brilliantly ingenious sci-fi comedy that balances wit with very real sociopolitical issues. The second is a dreary and formulaic hodgepodge of clashing themes as Payne abandons his initial fantastical conceit for an overwrought eco-drama and unconvincing love story. There are some interesting ideas at play here and the movie could easily have succeeded as a 45 minute short or as an episode of 'Black Mirror'. As a 2 hour feature film however, 'Downsizing' comes up disappointingly short.