Butler's Cinema Scene

Kristen Wiig, Matt Damon

“DOWNSIZING” My rating: C+ 

135 minutes | MPAA rating:

There’s a work of genius lurking inside “Downsizing,” one that struggles to make itself heard and ultimately loses steam and dribbles away.

Bottom line: The first half of Alexander Payne’s sci-fi/fantasy satire/end-of-the-world warning is pretty wonderful. After that, things get iffy.

In the film’s first moments we’re introduced to the concept of “downsizing” — not corporate layoffs but rather the shrinking of human beings to the size of Barbie Dolls.

Downsizing could be the answer to, well, everything.  An ear of corn could feed a dozen people for a week.  Tiny homes require almost no power to heat and cool efficiently.  Moving around is easy — downsized citizens ride in shoebox-sized containers that can fit easily in a bus or airplane’s overhead rack.

Omaha residents Paul and Audrey Safranek (Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig) are initially bemused by this new technology.  But after a decade of hand-to-mouth living they come to the conclusion that downsizing is the key to a prosperous future — especially when it is explained to them that after downsizing their modest savings will translate into millions of dollars.

So they contract to live in a downsized community (a glass dome offers protection from predatory birds). This mini-metropolis takes up only a couple of acres of real-world real estate but, in shrunken form, is the size of greater New York City. Their built-to-order mansion awaits.

The actual process of downsizing is cleverly laid out in Payne and Jim Taylor’s screenplay…and it’s a techno-nerdish wonder. Once sedated, the client’s dental fillings are removed (only organic tissue can be shrunk…a ceramic filling could cause the client’s head to explode).  All body hair is shaved (again, hair follicles are not alive…only the roots).

Once downsized, the comatose clients are moved about on spatulas, like burgers on a short-order grill.

It’s all very amusing, yet weirdly plausible.

Just one problem. Upon awakening Paul learns that Audrey got cold feet at the last minute. She now wants a divorce from her tiny husband and most of  their savings.

Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau

The film’s second act finds Paul adapting to his new wee life. Since his downsized millions never materialized, he’s now once again a working stiff, one of thousands of shrunken peons who keep things humming so that the truly rich can devote themselves to pleasure.

Instead of a posh mansion, Paul lives in an apartment complex. He is befriended by his upstairs neighbor, Dusan (Christoph Waltz), a party-hearty Eurotrash millionaire whose fortune rests on the smuggling of tinyed-down products across international borders.

It is through Dusan that Paul meets Ngoc (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese dissident punitively shrunk by her government and now working as a house cleaner. Ngoc is an angry ball of indignation who expresses herself in pidgin English that is presented as comical… although to these ears it flirts with uncomfortable racial stereotypes.

Nevertheless, through Ngoc our hero discovers the world hidden behind the flashy, shiny exterior of their scaled-down existence. Ngoc lives in a shanty town outside the walls of the city proper. It’s a place occupied by the poor from around the world, most of whom were downsized by their corrupt governments. Ngoc recruits the reluctant Paul to deliver desperately needed food and medicine to the sick and dying.

Act 3 takes place in Norway, where Paul, Ngoc and Dusan visit the original downsized colony, a tiny civilization of several hundred people who are tiny hippies, living off the land, growing tiny crops and animals. With the rapidly decaying social structure of the outside world — complete environmental collapse seems assured in a matter of years — these pioneers are preparing to retreat to a vast underground structure where they will wait out armageddon.  After  centuries they will emerge to inherit the Earth.

Paul must make a choice. Spend the rest of his life in this bunker, or return to the U.S. to do what good he can in the time left?

The big issue with “Downsizing” is not its content but rather its execution.

Damon gives one of his blandest performances here (and that’s saying something); none of the other cast members picks up the slack. Hong’s character is irritating; her fledgling romance with Paul carries almost no emotional weight.

The pacing, especially of the central portion, is slack and aimless. There are interminable scenes of Paul partying with Dusan’s dope-driven friends.

Most perplexing, the film never settles on a tone.  It’s ostensibly a comedy, but a comedy with almost no laughs and a denouement almost as grim as that of von Trier’s “Melancholia.” It wants to deliver an ultimately upbeat message, but it hardly registers with audiences whose eyes have glazed over after long, meandering storytelling.

Rack this one up in the could-have-been category.

| Robert W. Butler