Reel Entropy

Well the small person effects are pretty fun, at least. Image courtesy Paramount Pictures.

4/10 Downsizing has some big ideas, but it can’t convert its passive protagonist into a more interesting movie.

In an attempt to save the human race from extinction while reducing the catastrophic effect we have on the planet, scientist Jørgen Asbjørnsen (Rolf Lassgård) develops a procedure to reduce living creatures to around 2 percent of their mass and volume with no consequences. Asbjørnsen and global governments set up communities for the tiny people who undergo the procedure, who are then able to live like kings because of how few resources that would then take, but over a 15-year period, the technology is quickly incorporated into the unrelenting hellscape of socio-political injustice the ’10s have become. Dissidents in oppressive countries are downsized against their will, people who choose to downsize face persecution because of the effect they’re having on the economy, and the same distinctly racial systems of inequality quickly form within downsized communities.

But Downsizing takes place far from the troubles associated with the procedure. It follows Paul Safranek (Matt Damon), who decides to get small with his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) but is abandoned by her soon after. After a year of declining economic status because of their divorce and his failure to transfer his medical license, Safranek meets Serbian partyboy Dusan Mirkovic (Christoph Waltz), who makes a fortune trading on the price difference between regular-sized and small sized goods.

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