IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review
Downsizing [2017] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Alexander Payne along with Jim Taylor) is a silly movie based on a goofy premise _played completely straight_ that ultimately helps Viewers (re)-discover the surprising beauty/richness of their seemingly boring day-to-day lives. Wow? How could a goofy / silly movie do that?
Well about thirty years ago, another silly movie with a goofy premise, the Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan vehicle Joe vs the Volcano [1990] did a similar thing: There "Joe" (played by Tom Hanks) introduced to Viewers as an almost immobilized / hysterical hypochondriac was finally told by his doctor the news that he had always dreaded -- that in a year's time he was gonna die of a truly awful disease, that was all the more awful because it was utterly symptomless and neither he nor really anybody else had ever heard of it -- a "brain cloud." Knowing now, for certain, that "he's gonna die" Joe finally felt liberated to spend that last year of his life doing what he'd always wanted to do -- to go sailing around the world (or as much of it as he could before he, well, ... died). And while he went about doing that, he kept running into the same woman, in different incarnations (all played by Meg Ryan) until ... well ;-). A stupid movie, with a goofy premise, that turned out to be remarkably profound ;-).
The current movie begins with the announcement of a scientific breakthrough: A group of Norwegian scientists have come up with a way of shrinking people to 5 inches tall. WT...? Why? Well, the Norweigian scientists, led by the solemn / appropriately grim and _utterly sincere_ in his solemn grimness Dr. Jorgen Asbjørnsen (played by Rolf Lassgård) and his wife Anne-Helene Asbjørnsen (played by Ingjerd Egeberg) tout this as a _definitive_ solution for the world to climate change and over-population: Imagine that every person who shrunk him/herself to 5" in size (or about 2.3% of their present weight and volume) would correspondingly use only a tiny fraction of the resources that they currently consume.
This amusing premise is then even more amusingly played _completely straight_ through the rest of the story:
Some years after the solemn Asbjørnsens announced their breakthrough, real estate developers in the U.S. are selling to the struggling middle class the ECONOMIC POSSIBILITIES of "Living Big" by "Going Small." Middle class families finding it hard to buy homes at all in our dimensions, could come to live in McMansion-style _Doll Houses_ in new gated, indeed, domed, "Leisure Land" communities for well ... a few hundred bucks ;-).
And so it is, that Paul and Audrey Safranek (played by Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig) a random, struggling, and certainly not gonna go particularly anywhere late-30 early-40 something couple from Omaha, NE, decide that "going small" may be for them. Actually they're largely talked-into-it by couple of old-high school friends (played by Jason Sudeikis and Maribeth Monroe) who made a splash at their last High School reunion by coming there "smalled" (everybody else came to the reunion, basically how they've always been / for years ... so that couple, Dave and Carol Johnson, really _stood out_ ;-)
When their latest mortgage application gets rejected, they head out to the Nevada based "Leisureland Estates" and ... Paul certainly's sold, Audrey ... less so. She goes along with it, but just at the moment when they are separated to undergo their "smalling procedure" ... she backs out. As a result, since Paul's now 5" tall and Audrey 5'5" at least ... the two divorce, with Audrey taking most of their assets.
Paul's then _reduced_ to working now in a Leisureland phonebank (on the phone no one can tell that you're only 5" tall ...), and presumably paid smaller-sized wages as well. So ... gone are dreams of living in a McMansion-style doll house. He now lives in an apartment... with an annoying / quite noisy / ever partying neighbor above him ;-)
It's now that the the diminished / down-trodden Paul encounters the two most compelling characters in the story.
First there's Dušan Mirković (played brilliantly by Christoff Waltz) that noisy / ever partying upstairs neighbor who's this ever-smiling 'cause he's ever scheming Serbian mobster-like figure, who's figured out all sorts of silly, basically illegal, but arguably harmless (except to one's pride) ways to "make a buck off of this 'smalling scam'" -- among the things he sells are fake small "authentic cuban cigars" to the rich folks of leisureland: "So what, really, if they're made by tiny, smalled, Albanian refugees. They make a living, and I sell an image. Everybody wins." The same he does with wine and perfume, selling them presumably literally "a drop at a time." ;-)
And then there's one of Dušan's cleaning ladies: Ngoc Lan Tran (played inspiringly by Hong Chau) who had made news some years back when, as a jailed Vietnamese Dissident, she was "smalled against her will" and then along with 15 other "undesireables" deported inside a flat-screen television box, and discovered only when she reached the U.S. with the other 15 having already died "during the journey." Having lost a leg during her ordeal, she nonetheless, ran that cleaning service giving jobs to otherwise other "down on their luck" "small people" and ran all sorts of other charitable efforts for other "small people" in even greater need. And in a nice bow to the at least potentially transforming power of Christianity, it becomes clear that Ngoc Lan Tran was motivated to do all of this because of her Christian faith.
Well poor always basically invisible Paul, finds himself, despite himself, in the company of these lovely if eccentric characters: "I love you Paul, you're always so boring," says at one point the ever smiling, ever scheming Dušan as he gives him a big bear hug and kissed him on the top of his head.
And surprisingly, by the end of the film one's able to leave with some very interesting questions to ponder: Does "size" matter? "Big" or "small," the characters' personalities / capacities remained basically the same. Does "technological progress" matter? The same pitches, the same problems continue despite changes in our technological capabilities. So what does, in the end, _matter_? The film's actually quite clear in its opinion on that ;-).
A wonderfully initially "stupid" yet thought-provoking film ;-)
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