Downsizing flick captivates, reels in Toronto audience
Crowd chortles at the social satire, a tale about shrinking humans, starring Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig
Even when Matt Damon is five inches tall, he’s still a fan favourite.
Monday night marked the gala debut of Downsizing (in theatres Dec. 22), a new social satire from director Alexander Payne that stars Damon, Kristen Wiig and Christoph Waltz.
The premise is immediately amusing: As a solution to overpopulation, scientists find a way to shrink humans into dollhouse-size beings. Once small, the benefits are huge: The tiny people use a fraction of the resources that us oafish, big people do and, with relatively little money, they’re able to live lavishly, moving into minimansions and lying around in teeny plush robes.
That’s the choice Damon and Wiig face as Paul and Audrey Safranek, a struggling middleclass couple with meagre savings and dismal prospects. The Toronto audience chortled over the minimizing sequence in particular, during which techs scoop up the newly tiny beings with spatulas like cookies on a tray.
“Downsizing is about saving yourself,” a tiny Jason Sudeikis (as Paul’s pal Dave) boasts in a new trailer, hard-selling his fancy microcommunity in New Mexico (which is topped by a net because of birds).
“We live like kings. We’ve got the best houses, the best restaurants. Cheesecake Factory? We’ve got three of them.”
But like all technology, it can prove destructive in the wrong hands, as in the case of a woman (Hong Chau) who’s minimized against her will for protesting the Thai government.
“We wanted to not just include American stories but something about how the idea was rippling around the world,” Payne said during the film’s Q&A.
On the set, “he didn’t talk down to us,” cracked Waltz, playing Damon’s hard-partying European neighbour, who makes bank off the “small” black market (think miniature Cuban cigars).
Despite mixed reaction from critics, the Toronto audience was as engaged as this journalist has seen at the festival, which, aside from rising interest in titles such as The Shape of Water, Lady Bird and Breathe, has yielded few sure things in the Best Picture Oscar race.