Downsizing

A thoroughly bizarre misfire, Downsizing follows Matt Damon’s Paul Safranek as he and his wife (Kristen Wiig’s Audrey) agree to shrink themselves down to five inches and live in a special community just for miniaturized humans – with problems ensuing as Paul discovers that living tiny isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s an almost exceptionally high-concept premise that is, at the outset, employed to agreeable effect by filmmaker Alexander Payne, as the director, working from a script cowritten with Jim Taylor, delivers a briskly-paced opening stretch that’s rife with uncommonly compelling elements – including a typically engaging turn by Damon and a proliferation of sci-fi-themed ideas and interludes. (The shrinking sequence, for example, is handled incredibly well and is nothing short of fascinating.) Downsizing‘s compulsively watchable vibe persists right up until Damon’s character relocates to the aforementioned special community, after which point the movie begins to slowly-but-surely transform into a curiously by-the-numbers drama – as Payne emphasizes Paul’s rather tedious transformation into a socially-aware, environmentally-conscious individual. It’s a somewhat generic storyline that’s compounded by the presence of a seriously annoying supporting character named Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau, delivering one of 2017’s most grating performances), with the less-than-engrossing vibe compounded by a stagnant, meandering atmosphere and aggressively overlong running time (ie much of the film’s midsection consists of padded-out and entirely needless sequences). By the time the overtly ill-advised final stretch rolls around, Downsizing has firmly established itself as a misbegotten endeavor that stands as an obvious low point for the otherwise reliable Payne.

** out of ****