DECEMBER 28, 2017
“Downsizing,” directed and co-written by Alexander Payne is essentially two different movies, neither one of which is very good.
This saddens me, because Payne is one of my very favorite filmmakers, bringing taste and intelligence to some of my favorite films, including “Election,” “Sideways” and “Nebraska.” In a career of distinguished movies, “Downsizing” is easily Payne’s worst film ever.
The premise is clever, if a bit limited. (It reminds me of the “high-concept, no-delivery” skits that characterize the “SNL” sketches that come on five minutes before the host says goodnight. That kind of skit.) “Downsizing” is set in the suburbia of the near future, where the Safraneks — Paul (Matt Damon, playing yet another suburban schlub) and Audrey (Kristen Wiig) — are having problems making ends meet with no easy way out.
One night at a high school reunion, they see old friends Dave (Jason Sudeikis) and Carol Johnson (Maribeth Monroe) who have “downsized” in a procedure that has reduced them to 5 1/2 inches tall. Through a process that was perfected 15 years earlier, downsizing has become all the rage, being good for the environment through a reduction in waste, and, as Dave confides to Paul, downsizing will save Paul a fortune because his money will go so much farther when he’s small.
Seeing downsizing as a way out of his family’s financial hole, Paul and Audrey visit the offices of Leisureland, a popular luxury community for the small, and they commit to the irreversible procedure. After Paul wakes up to find himself small, he receives a call from Audrey, who explains that she could not go through with the procedure and has bailed on him, leaving Paul by himself in Leisureland.
Payne has gone to great lengths to make the downsizing process believable (including a 15-minute laugh-free prologue set in Norway about how the process was perfected), but when Paul finally gets small, you’re still wondering, to what end? Yes, it’s supposed to be a social satire, but of what? Consumerism? Maybe, but it’s an awfully convoluted road to get there. After such a long build-up to get to Leisureland, you may be thinking, the second half of the film had better deliver something.
It does but not in a way you’d expect.
One of the few pleasures of the film’s first half was the interaction between the big humans and the small, cleverly handled by Payne. But once Paul is in Leisureland, everyone is the same size, so that distinguishing feature is now gone. He doesn’t take up with his old buddy Dave, but instead Paul becomes friends with his upstairs neighbor, Serbian playboy Dusan Mirkovic (Christoph Waltz) and his cleaning lady Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a one-legged Vietnamese activist who was shrunk against her will. Bet you didn’t see that coming.
Should you want to venture beyond this, have a wonderful time. That being said, there is one wonderful thing about “Downsizing,” and that’s the terrific performance of Hong Chau. Her Lan Tran quickly becomes the driver of the action in the film’s second half, and, although she has been criticized in some corners because of her character’s broken English, her accent is apparently authentic for an immigrant from Vietnam and, besides, Lan Tran is by far the smartest major character in the film.
Hong has already been nominated for a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance and will likely be the only part of the disappointing “Downsizing” that will be remembered 10 years from now. Or even 10 months from now.
GRADE: C
