Downsizing Movie Review

Downsizing (2017)

Buy Downsizing on Amazon Video
Written by:  Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Directed by: Alexander Payne
Starring:  Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
A social satire in which a man realizes he would have a better life if he were to shrink himself to five inches tall, allowing him to live in wealth and splendor.

Verdict
I thought this would be more profound and introspective. The concept is under developed, and the big-small contrast is only used a few times. The cool concept lures you in, but at it's core this is a story of a disillusioned man who stumbles upon fulfillment. It's not a bad story, but it doesn't live up to the premise. Maybe life at five inches tall isn't any different, but I wanted this idea fully developed and it isn't.
Skip it.

Review
The first few scenes doesn't work if you've seen the trailer. You know what's in the box, a five inch tall man. It's a radical idea. How do you solve the over-consumption of resources and the high production of waste? Use less. People don't want to curtail their use, so in this movie a scientist discovers how to shrink the average human to five inches tall. Smaller people use and produce less. At a tenth of their size, things cost less. If you shrink yourself you could be rich on your current income.

I love the premise. Early on we get into the political question of whether downsized people's vote should count the same since they pay less taxes and don't contribute as much. The rebuttal to that is that everything is proportional. Voting isn't dictated by the amount of contributions to society. Still, I liked that the movie was at least exploring the concept albeit clumsily. Unfortunately, the movie fails to delve into this concept once the shrink occurs. I did like the small detail that hair and teeth don't shrink. It's somewhat irrelevant, but it provides the appearance that the writers thought about the process a bit.

Married couple Paul and Audrey decide to downsize. They don't have the money to buy the big house, and this is an opportunity. Things don't go quite as planned. We get a time jump that leaves out a few too many details. Paul's dream of being rich is dashed and he's forced to live in a tiny apartment working at a call center. The movie employs this tired convention just to cement how disillusioned he is with life, but it felt like a missed opportunity to explore the contrast of small and large and how society functions with this technology. While the questions of how Paul got here don't matter, and we can guess fairly accurately how it happened, it just felt lazy to not provide a few scenes of the process.

Downsizing promised riches for everyone, but there is still a class divide. It's even sharper in the downsized towns. I guessed how this plot would resolve half way in. Paul's discontent with life. He feels like he never made it. Downsizing was a way to be rich and compete with everyone else. Of course, that's the wrong reason to do it. We know that, Paul doesn't. His get rich quick scheme ends up with him being worse off than before he downsized. When he helps a Ngoc, a political activist, she pulls him into her world. Paul sees the class divide for himself and also sees how much effort Ngoc expends helping people. He derives satisfaction from helping people. I knew at that point how the movie was going to 'fix' Paul.

I thought there would be more of small Paul in the large world. I just wanted more. The small aspect is a gimmick. You could take that out and it wouldn't alter the story. This is about fate and fulfillment. The size aspect isn't crucial to the story. I wondered if Paul would discover some kind of corruption with the shrinking facility. His counselor had a quick reason as to why she didn't downsize. I wondered if there was something to it, but there wasn't.

I expected this to go deeper. It doesn't have to be profound, but at least introspective. Paul's story is boiler plate aside from the shrinking technology.