Downsizing Review

1.5 Stars

 

The world has reached a breaking point with over-population.  A pair of Norwegian scientists have figured out a way to not only stop the human race from completely depleting the planet of all its resources, but also to provide a better and more luxurious lifestyle to anyone who chooses to participate in his program of Downsizing.  His patients are shrunk to a height of 5 inches and live in an experimental community built just for them.  While they are praised for their efforts, and communities are built in several areas of the world, only a small fraction of the world actually participate in the program.

Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) is a physical therapist living in Omaha with his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig).  Like many couples today, they are struggling financially to make ends meet.  And, like many couples, they have at least toyed with the idea of Downsizing.  At a high school reunion, Paul and Audrey talk to Dave Johnson (Jason Sudeikis) and his wife Carol (Maribeth Monroe) who have already undergone the irreversible process.  They sing the praises of the community and get the Safraneks thinking even more about the idea.  But it's not until they are denied a mortgage on a new home that they take the trip to New Mexico and agree to change their lives forever by Downsizing.

And that's really all we were told about the movie from the preview.  It's an original idea, sort of.  Dennis Quaid was shrunken in 1987 in a movie called Innerspace.  Two years later, Rick Moranis accidentally shrunk his kids in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.  It goes all the way back to 1957 with the film, The Incredible Shrinking Man.  But Downsizing looked like a new and different take on the idea of shrinking.  The only other thing we really had to go on is that the movie is rated R, and there was absolutely nothing in the preview that even hinted as to why that would be.  

 

First, the R rating.  There is plenty of full frontal male nudity in the film.  It's completely unnecessary and used purely in a medical sense.  First, a nude man is pictured to show the before and after effects of Downsizing.  Then, a group of men are shown disrobed on tables undergoing the process.  Again, it's not used in a sexual way, and there's really no reason we need to see everything they show to get the idea of what's going on.  There is also one psychedelic party scene at Paul's neighbor's apartment that involves some drug use and brief nudity.  And there are some F-bombs that, again, didn't really need to be in there.  However, when there's no real substance to a movie, you tend to resort to things like that just to reel in some audiences.  

The people responsible for putting together previews really did their job well.  I had no idea what this movie was about, except the basic premise, but I was very excited to see what it's all about.  And those people deserve a raise because they not only hid any hint of why the movie would be rated R from the previews, they also concealed the fact that there's really no plot or substance behind an otherwise original idea for a story.  Paul and his wife Audrey are separated at the Downsizing facility because men and women go through in different areas.  When Paul awakes after the procedure, he gets a call from his wife who has changed her mind and leaves him alone in the shrunken world that he cannot come back from.  After the divorce, Paul must sell the mansion that his modest earning afforded him in the Downsized world, and he moves into an apartment.  He works at a call center and is pretty much miserable.  One night, he decides to join his upstairs neighbor Dusan Mirkovic (Christoph Waltz) at one of his lavish parties.  The next morning, he meets Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau).  She was a protestor in Vietnam who was imprisoned and Downsized against her will.  Paul befriends Tran and quickly becomes her errand boy as she cares for those in the "slums" of the Downsized world.  Paul and Tran join Dusan on a trip to Norway, the original colony.  It is there they are told the methane gases released from the arctic snow caps have reached a level spelling eminent doom for the planet.  So they have carved out an underground safe haven where they can live and repopulate.  Paul thinks this is finally how his life will have meaning, but changes his mind realizing his love for Tran.  They go back home and the movie abruptly ends.  

 

There were a couple chuckles throughout the movie, but it felt like watching an amateur comedian bomb on stage, or a magician who's tricks just aren't working.  The idea was there, the actors were there, but there was no substance to this confusing, no point, slow-paced, unnecessary downer of a flop.  I gave an initial cautious and curious 3.5 Star rating with so little to go on.  But the preview for Downsizing certainly fooled us all and that rating will plummet to  1.5 Stars.  It was not worth the price of admission in the theatre, I'll most likely never watch it again, even for free on cable, and I'll definitely never own it.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.