Movie Review – Downsizing

I’m a little annoyed at Downsizing. The trailers presented this as a lightweight, fluffy comedy about being resized to five inches tall (in order to use less planetary resources). Great! Except this isn’t actually a comedy, and you barely get the sense of being shrunk. After the first half hour, it may as well be a drama about regularly sized people. The funny elements come to a screeching halt and never resume.

[pullquote]I feel like Matt Damon tricked me into seeing an environmental polemic[/pullquote], with little-to-no sci fi elements. Not my idea of fun tonight. I expected a story about how unusual life would be in a really different, unique scenario. What a cool idea — you can live like a prince with the abundant resources now available to you! A little heads up from the studio would have been nice, letting us know this was a serious story about politics. Gotta mentally pick movies for the mood! Grrr.

Kudos for presenting scenes in the film with forced perspective, to make the viewer feel disoriented. Some of the sets looked like toy models, which was no accident. I noticed a lot of interesting filmation choices, and props obviously made to give viewers the sense of normal proportions being off. Some places looked like adorable miniature sets, which worked well.

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There were also (mostly) scenes where nothing seemed small at all. Those were frustrating, since the plot became, out of nowhere, all about race and poverty. Again, great if you’re in the mood. I prefer my entertainment to lift me out of sad reality, and make me smile a while. This film WON’T.

NOTE to Mr. Damon: please stop it. I’m happy to see your movies if the studios present them accurately. No more pet satires to make us ‘think”, disguising themselves as light fare. This isn’t the first time this year (Suburbicon comes to mind).

Anyway. This film didn’t go near where it should have gone, and I’m kind of leery of Damon now. It seems he’s doing a lot of sardonic projects examining senseless violence, race issues, or some other meaningful, topical theme. I could have seen one of the many comedies out this week, and gone home happy instead.

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Movie Grade: C+