Downsizing

This is a disappointment. Alexander Payne's latest film attempts to do something on a wider scale than his earlier films like Election, Sideways and About Schmidt, looking at issues of consumerism and our responsibility for the environment through a sci-fi "what if" as an experiment in shrinking people to reduce consumption spreads across society.

The main problem is our protagonist. Matt Damon plays a reasonably average guy who decides to join in the trend. And the first hour or so of this film follows him as he drifts through life, drifting into the decision to shrink himself down, and the various people he encounters along the way. It's not until the second half when he encounters Ngoc Tran (played by Hong Chau), a Vietnamese activist who's been shrunk against her will and migrated to the US, and gets exposure to the new underclass of his society that anything really come of it. Damon's character is really remarkably aimless, and not in any kind of interesting way. He has a pleasant enough accepting demeanour, but that doesn't make for compelling or dramatic storytelling, and until Tran comes along there aren't any other characters who get to stick around for long enough to make an impact (and there's quite a reasonable bunch of supporting actors, from Kristen Wiig and Jason Sudekis to Margot Martindale, Neil Patrick Harris and Laura Dern, all of whom have roles that amount to very little).

There's no goddam reason for this to be focussed so strongly on the bland white-guy protagonist - Damon can be a fine actor when he's got something to pursue (whether it's to escape Mars, punch people in the face in pursuit of his identity, or pulling off a Vegas scam), but when he hasn't, there's not nearly enough surface charm to let us go along with this dull, dull character (and even when Tran comes along, she's still filtered through his boring, boring protagonist).

So give it a big miss.