A tale packed with big ideas

Downsizing 15 cert, 135 mins Dir Alexander Payne

Starring Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Udo Kier, Jason Sudeikis, Neil Patrick Harris, Laura Dern

‘Aperson’s a person, no matter how small,” Dr Seuss once memorably advised, and that’s more or less the binding philosophy of Alexander Payne’s new film. The director of Election, Sideways and Nebraska is well-versed in making momentous life events feel like microscopic trifles and vice versa, and this science-fiction satire pushes that comic technique to its logical limits.

The premise is picaresque – perhaps even Pixar-esque – and the kind of thing you just have to run with. In a familiar near-future world, Norwegian scientists have developed a procedure that allows us to shrink humans down to pocket-size. It is irreversible, but comes with two big benefits. Finances that were meagre in the “real” world can stretch much further, while the reduced environmental impact of a six-inch-tall life means you’re doing your bit, oh-so conspicuously, for the planet. Plus you get to live in theme park-like walled communities for small people, with names like Leisureland and Pirate’s Cove. So cute!

Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) can see the appeal. For a hard-working physio still struggling to muster a deposit for a home of his own, downsizing would solve all of his problems. What’s more, his school friend (Jason Sudeikis) just underwent the procedure and speaks very highly of it, or as highly as it’s possible to from ankle height, at least.

So Paul and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) attend a no-strings-attached seminar where they’re finally sold on the idea and book in for the transition. Post-procedure there’s no turning back and the film wallows in their apprehension, which is cringingly palpable thanks to Damon,wiig and the subtle creepiness of small-world life. Payne contrives a clever shot of Small talk: Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) with playboy Dusan (Christopher Waltz) Damon ambling down a corridor at the medical facility in which he seems to be shrinking through perspective alone, and the uneasy look on Wiig’s face speaks volumes.

After the transition, Payne and his co-writer Jim Taylor wring out the concept for all it’s worth, and the film feels less like a single adventure than an anthology of fables from the downsized world. The supporting cast all make entrances like guest stars emerging from behind the curtain at a panto

– not least Christoph Waltz, as uproarious Serbian playboy Dusan, who introduces Paul to the seamier crevices of the miniaturised life.

It’s thanks to Dusan that Paul meets Ngoc Lan (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese dissident forcibly downsized by her country’s government, who made her escape to the US via cardboard box a horrific ordeal. Now working as a cleaner in Leisureland’s glossier enclaves, she opens Paul’s eyes to the plights of the downsized have-nots, and temporarily turns the film into Honey, I Shrunk My White Privilege. It can feel a little wide-eyed, but it’s rescued from mawkishness by well-placed dry humour and a terrific performance from Chau, whose character nicely cuts across Damon’s general Matt Damonness – and their unexpected chemistry turbo-charges the film through its increasingly foreboding final stretch, in which the fate of humanity, full-sized and otherwise, hangs in the balance.

Gulliver’s Travels is an obvious influence – Payne is definitely going for Swiftian – but there is also a bit of Avatar too, with the suggestion that a healthier world-view might only be a bizarre physical transition away. The big difference is that our better selves here aren’t svelte blue aliens: they’re just us, with a blunt awareness of what we actually amount to, and a determination to make our being here worthwhile. Contrary to the teachings of another childhood ditty, Payne’s film thrills to the idea that it may not be such a small world after all.