It’s a small world, after all
A movie plot ripe for jokes and satire doesn’t quite come off.
The characters in the new sci-fi comedy from Alexander Payne ( Sideways, The Descendants) talk about “getting small”, an action that has nothing to do with losing excess fat.
Rather, it refers to a procedure in which people can be shrunk to 12-13cm after being placed in a steel contraption that dings like a microwave. All you need is a full-body shave, your fillings removed and the willingness to be scraped from a gurney with a spatula, as if you were a fried egg.
Paul and Audrey (Matt Damon and
Kristen Wiig) agree to downsize when they discover their meagre assets translate to millions in the little world. So much for saving the planet: they can live like kings in a tiny fiefdom known as Leisureland.
Payne’s idea is ripe for jokes. It’s primed for satire, too. Leisureland looks like a cross between a zoo, a retirement home and The Truman Show. Once inside, Paul meets a Vietnamese cleaner (Hong Chau), who shows him the less lovely underbelly of the new utopia. Humans tend to reproduce inequality, no matter how big or small.
Throughout, there are mentions of stories that would be far more interesting than what we eventually get: Borrower-sized terrorists? Downsizing for political dissidents? Wouldn’t one raindrop feel like a tsunami?
Payne isn’t really interested in the quirks of this world. He heads in the direction of apocalypse, complete with hippie cults. But the satire, minute as it is, wears out very quickly.
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