50% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: Low-energy entertainment;
Proceed at your own risk
Watch it if you: Just want something to put on in the background when you do something else;
Just want a simple comedy that isn't as philosophical as it advertises itself to be
Attempting to cure the world of overpopulation and its resulting climate change effects, scientists discover how to permanently shrink people down to about 5 inches tall, literally reducing people's carbon footprints.
I was so excited for this movie when I saw the first trailer. It looked like a Black Mirror episode, except fun. It looked interesting, they didn't give away much of the plot, and I was really keen. Then I saw the second trailer for it (not deliberately, but it was shown in front of a movie I was watching), and I was like, oh... that's what it's about?! The second trailer kind of spoiled it for me, and I might not have watched this movie so soon if it weren't for a friend wanting to watch it with me.
Because of my low expectations though, I thought the film was not... terrible. But it was still... not very good. There are moments that are entertaining but there is definitely a lot more potential that the film could have reached, particularly because the premise is so interesting. In the end, it's a big disappointment.
Firstly, there will be mild spoilers in this blog. Nothing too spoilery, but I will be discussing the same things that the second trailer reveals. In fairness though, I think that if you want to see this movie, you need to know what you're getting yourself into.
So for the rest of this blog, be warned.
Sigh... so the first trailer shows us Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig as a married couple thinking of downsizing to relieve a lot of the financial pressure they are facing. Their money in the normal 'big' world can be translated to roughly 12 million dollars in the small world, meaning they can live a work-free life of luxury in a huge mansion for the rest of their lives.
Except, in the second trailer we find out that Kristen Wiig gets cold feet and decides to no longer undergo the downsizing procedure, leaving Matt Damon permanently small and without a wife. This is when the movie starts to go downhill, as it becomes a movie of self discovery.
And you know what? Movies of self discovery are fine. Heck, there are a lot of good self-discovery movies out there.
But this movie is so long because it's trying to handle the issue of downsizing, with the issue of climate change, with a whole lot of other social issues, all while going through Matt Damon's mid-life crisis. It's too much, it drags out, the movie seems unfocused and lacks a serious sense of direction. And the story line they choose to go with is the one least relevant to downsizing: it's Matt Damon's self discovery.
So they took this great premise of humanity killing the planet and people opting to downsize, and yet went nowhere with it. There are complications in this movie that fuel the plot that have nothing to do with downsizing, and sometimes you just forget that they're even small to begin with. It just seems like a normal movie about normal-sized people! Especially when there are things like small TVs and small mobile phones all built to scale so it doesn't even seem like they're not living in the real world. This whole film could have happened without them actually downsizing, honestly.
It would have been great if they brought in some large scale issue that actually affected small people because they were small. Something bigger than Matt Damon's self esteem blow needed to happen for this movie to be good.
And they actually tried to do this... they tried to show human nature not really changing even when small, they tried to show the effects of climate change on the human race, they tried to show the effects of corrupt politicians in developing countries, the struggles that refugees face, and they even tried to show us the effects of poverty. There's a lot of social issues happening but these don't really go anywhere. It's weird that I feel like these things were both 1) very preachy, and 2) not expanded on enough. I think it's because it felt like they had too many wild ideas floating around their minds, that they couldn't decide which idea to go with, so they all sort of crammed everything in to this movie. Which is what makes it long and lacking direction and focus.
As to the acting. Matt Damon is fine but he doesn't really stand out in this film. It's actually interesting all his movies in the last two years have been flops, I really hope his next few movies are a lot better.
However, Christoph Waltz is amazing in this. He is a fantastic actor, and I think he mentioned his character was actually written for a young actor, but he convinced the director to cast him, and he does a really great job. He is so funny and really steals the scene a lot of the time.
However, the person who steals the entire show has to go to Hong Chau. It was so nice seeing an Asian woman have so much screen time, and Hong Chau did a really good job at being both really funny, with great comedic timing, as well as being a really good dramatic actor. The only thing is that it was really unfortunate that her character and her actions were really a big caricature of a Vietnamese immigrant. Her accent was insane and very stereotypical, although I am guilty of laughing at the way she said things (and I now want to rewatch Anjelah Johnson's nail salon stand up).
Overall, this movie was disappointing because it has a really great premise but they didn't make full use of it. There is too much social commentary happening, and the main plotline doesn't even need to happen to someone who downsized. It seemed interesting at the start but then it becomes a movie where they forget downsizing even really exists in that world. The acting is decent but it's not enough to make up for the film's flaws.
A few side notes:
- As if they were the first couple to have gotten cold feet? As if there isn't a thing where if one half of a couple gets cold feet, then they wouldn't continue doing the procedure with the other person?
- Also why are children getting downsized? They should be at least 21 years old before they get to choose to downsize. You can't just force your already 10 year old kid... what if they never wanted it and they're stuck small forever???
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