Downsizing

I’d call this one a missed opportunity. Matt Damon and Kristin Wiig are a couple who decide to avail themselves of a new technology that can shrink you down to five inches high. There are several advantages to this, such as becoming no more a drain on Earth’s resources than a gerbil, but the one that appeals is that the cost of living would be very small. You could live in a mansion that would fit on a tabletop. Matt emerges from the process to find that his wife has chickened out at the last minute. The process, of course, is irreversible.

It could have been a satire, it could have been a thriller, it could have been a cautionary tale. In a way, it tries to be all three, and even a little bit of a comedy, and fails at all of them. My feeling is that the only path for a concept as ridiculous as this is comedy.

But the biggest missed chance, for me, is the look of the thing. He enters his new mansion … and it’s just a mansion. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if it looked to be made of Lego bricks, or something similar? There should be some indication that the objects and plants and machines are scale models. There is also the idea of putting regular things into the mini environment. Endless possibilities, and the only thing I can recall is a single rose the size of a beach ball. How about he goes into his garage and gets in his Ferrari, but he has to wind the spring with the key sticking out of the trunk first? How about pet mice the size of German shepherds? It’s really a shame. It could have been funny.