“Can there be any clearer signal of reality warping as we hurtle toward imminent apocalypse than the fact that Alexander Payne has made a life-affirming film?” asks Jessica Kiang at the Playlist. “Venice opener Downsizing takes the long road getting there, and it’s a journey full of witty, skittish, scenic detours leading to the occasional dead end. But the ride is not only peppered with moments of inspired humor, it’s also peopled by characters who are expressly, unapologetically likable, so that by its unexpectedly chipper ending, it’s been an enjoyable, broadly accessible and wonkily heartfelt good-time-at-the-movies. It’s about humanity gaining the power to shrink to one-twelfth of its size, but it’s Payne’s most expansive film by roughly the same proportion, inverted.”
“Films about tiny little people in a big world—The Borrowers, the Honey I Shrunk… franchise—gain much of their dramatic traction by focusing on how not to get eaten by cats and other survival skills,” writes Lee Marshall in Screen. “Alexander Payne’s follow-up to Nebraska (2013) offers a different take on mini-men. What if human shrinkage were promoted for environmental reasons, to reduce our impact on a polluted planet with dwindling natural resources? And what if flawed humans, faced with a global economic downturn, immediately latched on to the process for another more selfish motive—because in a downsized world, you can live like a king for a fraction of what it would cost in the big country?”
“Matt Damon stars as Paul Safranek, an overstretched man in an overstretched world, working as an occupational therapist down at Omaha Steaks and still living in the house where he was born,” writes the Guardian’s Xan Brooks. “Paul hungers for a fresh start and finds it courtesy of the newfangled technique of ‘cellular miniaturization,’ which promptly shrinks the recipient to a height of five inches. This technique has apparently been pioneered by scientists out in Norway, although one might just as easily claim that Payne has been doing it for years. Films like Election, Sideways, and Nebraska, for instance, spotlighted a burgeoning crisis in American masculinity, focusing on men who fear that they’re seen as small by the world. With the excellent Downsizing, Payne has simply gone that extra mile.”
“Once the transition has taken place, Payne and his co-writer Jim Taylor wring out the concept for everything it’s worth,” writes the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, “and their plot makes so many left turns it’s easy to temporarily forget which way is forward. The star-studded supporting cast”—including Kristen Wiig as Paul’s wife, Audrey, and Jason Sudeikis as his best friend—“who nudge Paul’s life onto a series of unexpected new tracks, are all given entrances like they’re suddenly emerging from behind the curtain at a panto—not least Christoph Waltz, who gives an uproarious turn as Damon’s neighbor, a Serbian playboy called Dusan, and Udo Kier as his improbable friend and business associate, an impeccably turned-out yachtsman.”
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It’s “the most whimsically outlandish film of Payne’s career,” finds Variety’s Owen Gleiberman, “though that doesn’t mean it’s made with anything less than his usual highly thought-out and controlled master-craftsman bravura. Downsizing is an ingenious comedy of scale, a touching tale of a man whose problems grow bigger as he gets smaller, and an earnest environmental parable. It all adds up to a film that risks, at times, becoming a little too much, yet Payne . . . has made that rare thing: a ticklish and resonant crowd-pleaser for grown-ups.”
“Matt Damon's Paul Safranek is like the hero of a Frank Capra or Preston Sturges film of seventy-five years ago, an ordinary man who has a certain sort of greatness thrust upon him,” writes the Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy. “At the same time, the movie is a highly sophisticated creation that, due to its off-hand, underplayed presentation of the future, essentially seems to be taking place in the present day.”
“Downsizing sees Payne and Taylor working on a larger palette than usual, but like their shrunken characters, the filmmakers’ humor and their sharp observation of the human condition have survived the change in size and scope,” finds Alonso Duralde at TheWrap.
“It’s the first time I’ve done a visual effects movie, so it was a lovely education on how to make one,” Payne tells Deadine’s Nancy Tartaglione. “Look at all these people making visual effects films all the time, making crappy ones at that. How hard can it be? The point is to use it well and make sure—I’m saying the obvious—it always serves the story.”
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