When Life Gets Difficult, a Man Begins Looking at the Smaller Things

Hong Chau and Matt Damon in "Downsizing"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com

Science-fiction is a genre that’s ripe with potential for social and political commentary, as it provides the opportunity to create new worlds on screen that can parallel our own current affairs.  When done right, you get an accomplished feat like 1956’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”  When done wrong, you get something unsubtle like 2013’s “Elysium.”  

It takes a skilled director to be able to avoid heavy-handedness when crafting something that’s topical.  Unfortunately, when it comes to Alexander Payne’s sci-fi comedy-drama, “Downsizing,” the filmmaking talent he’s displayed in the past is lost in an unfocused plot and bland characters.

In the not-too-distance future, scientists have figured out revolutionary and eco-friendly lifestyle called “downsizing,” an irreversible process that shrinks people down to five inches, allowing them to live in communities with other downsized individuals, complete with financial benefits.  15 years after the discovery, Paul and Audrey Safranek (Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig), who are experiencing monetary troubles, decide to go through the process themselves.  When Paul wakes up from the procedure, he finds out that Audrey backed out at the last minute.  He then must reassess his life as he moves into his downsized community.

Matt Damon is an actor who’s impressed audiences with a variety of roles over the past couple of decades in films like “Good Will Hunting,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” the “Bourne” trilogy, and “The Departed,” among many others.  However, this is probably the first time where I was bored with one of his performances.  The role is blandly written, and he seems to just go along with that blandness and not add anything to the character that makes him memorable.

Most of the supporting cast, such as Wiig, Christoph Waltz, and Jason Sudeikis, give decent performances, but they all share the same misfortunate as Damon, in that none of them are given much that’s special to do.  

Hong Chau, who plays a Vietnamese political activist who befriends Paul, is a character who has the potential to be complex; however, most of her time on screen becomes bogged down by the film using her broken English for laughs, instead of giving her character much depth.  Hopefully, her next film role is something more layered, because the instances where she gets to show her talent are some of the film’s very few highlights.

The screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor, who frequently collaborate, doesn’t quite know what it wants to do, as it presents a couple of social/political messages and doesn’t do much with either of them.  Despite the boring characters, I’ll admit that the story has an intriguing first act, where the environmental message doesn’t come on too strong and includes an original angle with which to address the issue at hand.  However, the second and third acts don’t expand on that angle in any noteworthy fashion.

Not only do these allegories become groan-inducing in their unsubtle nature once the first act ends, but one of said allegories (which comes in the second act) is about the less-fortunate living in the slum-like outskirts of the downsized community, and it proves to be rather similar to the themes of “Elysium,” with Damon playing the “white savior” in both of these movies.  This isn’t only an unnecessary aspect of the film, but Payne and Taylor don’t even bother to add any insight to it that we haven’t seen before.  If you want your movie to go in the direction of current-events, it’s better to pick one subject and stick with it to make an engaging story, instead of losing your focus by including multiple messages and not having anything memorable to say about any of them.

As a director, Payne handles the drama okay at times, but it usually suffers from the film’s heavy-handedness, and that heavy-handedness doesn’t allow him to embrace the delightful strangeness and laughs that the narrative’s scenario can provide.  The humor comes across fine in the first third, but for the rest of the movie, the comedy (however much of it the movie has at that point, anyway) is dragged down by the more-dramatic portions that feel out of place with the humorous premise.

Payne might have had admirable intentions, but “Downsizing” isn’t up to the standards of the talent that’s involved.

Final grade: C