Downsizing
Size matters in this semi-successful collage of a film that is full of miniature successes and gargantuan failings.
Matt Damon (famous for some movies) stars as Paul Safranek, a man burdened by the ennui of a life without purpose, who undergoes a radical transformation and shrinks to the height of five inches in a desperate bid to get himself a slice of the rose-tinted life in the mini luxury village of Leisureland. But, oh so predictably, things don’t turn out as peachy as the perfect, TV commercial life he thought he was going to get, and it just rambles on from there.
The trailer sales pitch would have you believe that this is a macabre Honey I Shrunk the Kids for an older audience, but whilst there are some cleverly realised parts of the conceit, such as people’s heads exploding because their fillings weren’t removed before the shrinking, or everyone becoming kings and queens of mini-ville because their earnings are suddenly worth exponentially more, the film just becomes a completely different film half way through and leaves you feeling angry and betrayed and demanding a refund.
You come away from it feeling like you watched bloopers for several different, better films. There is an acid trip that feels like it was lifted from Trainspotting 2, a wannabe house party out-take from Bad Neighbours, some slices of suburban surrealism that are reminiscent of A Serious Man and some soul-searching micro-philosophising that echoes themes in Jane Campion’s work. There are enough SNL actors and acclaimed comedians that no one would blame you for expecting this to be a riotous comedy, and enough heavy-weight actors that you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was Oscar-bait, but really, it is neither of those things. The whole “omg we’re like, really small” schpeel is cut loose in favour of a rather underwhelming and lack-lustre bourgeois drama with a soupçon of environmental disaster thrown in. Despite the odd powerful bit of dialogue, this film feels like Hollywood hoovered up all their scrapped plans for B-List movies and forcibly dicing them up in their money-grabbing blender.
There are a hundred and one reasons why casting Matt Damon for this role was a bad idea, but the main one has to be that, with the exception of Good Will Hunting, Damon only has two modes: steely unemotional Jason Bourne-mode and slightly moronic suburbia family-man mode, so whilst the film sees him starting off in the latter, the emotional depth and sheer existential angst that it has in store for him was never going to be possible. Christoph Waltz, with his Cheshire cat smile and ability to charge the blandest of dialogue with menace, is a sprinkle of (albeit creepy and condescending) joy in this pit of confusion that has thinly disguised itself as a blockbuster.
The real heart of the film lies with the character of Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese refugee and sole survivor of a group of small asylum-seekers who suffocated in a TV box. Played sensationally by Hong Chau (Inherent Vice), Ngoc just drifts into the story, and from then on makes it hers. Damon basically just becomes her supporting actor from then on, which is a relief. Her character rallies together all the lost, wandering elements of the film and, with an almost super-human effort, succeeds in turning a sinking ship of a film into just a marooned boat without buoyancy aids.
There is only a tiny amount of joy to be had by watching Downsizing, which is, and shall remain, a muddled, inconsistent and infuriating film of rather underwhelming proportions.
4/10
