Matt Damon gets small in Downsizing.

Post date: Jan 9, 2018 12:31:51 PM

By: Robby Timmler, Promotional Director

Posted January 9th, 2018

Downsizing is the story of Paul Safranek (played by Matt Damon) and his wife, Audrey (played by Kristen Wiig) a couple looking for a new house, but don’t have the money for it. At a High School reunion, Paul speaks about his money issues to his pal, Dave (played by Jason Sudeikis) who downsized along with his wife, and tells Paul that Downsizing is the way to go. Downsizing is the surgical process of shrinking a person down to about 5 inches where there are able to live in a huge house in communities that are crime free and offer many activities/luxuries. So Paul and Audrey decide to go through the process of Downsizing, but when Paul wakes up Audrey isn’t there. It turns out that Audrey couldn’t go through with it and leaves Paul. A year goes by and Paul has started over with his life with his neighbor, Dusan (played by Christoph Waltz) a party animal. One night Paul goes to one of Dusan’s parties and wakes up the next morning to meet Ngoc Lan Tran (played by Hong Chau) a former vietnam prisoner that was downsized, cross the border; losing her leg in the process, and became a cleaning lady. Paul starts a friendship with Ngoc and later falls in love with her. Dusan then offers Paul and Ngoc to travel with him to the first colony and they accept. Along the way, they meet Dr. Jorgen Asbjornsen (played by Rolf Lassgard) who was the scientist behind Downsizing and who also says that the world is going to end, but all is not lost for he has a bunker for people to live in and repopulate. So Paul has to choose Ngoc or the bunker.

Downsizing is an interesting idea that is truly fascinating. The acting is terrific especially the chemistry between Paul and Ngoc. The Downsized communities are mind blowing to see and very detailed. The process of Downsizing is also interesting seeing all the steps that have to be done to become small. The film also shows the struggles of people like Ngoc, who are the servants or the poor people of the communities that live in poor housing and don’t get the same benefits compared to the other people of the communities. The weakness of the film is that one or two of the CGI (Computer Generated Images) look terrible. Downsizing gets 9.5/10 stars.