The incredible shrinking plan
DOWNSIZING (Cert 15; 135mins)
IF HG WELLS had written Gulliver’s Travels, it might have turned out a little like Downsizing. The latest film from Sideways director Alexander Payne is a meandering mixture of science fiction and sentimental social satire that is much more earnest than you might have expected if you saw the breezy exuberance of the trailer.
In Downsizing, the threat of overpopulation has inspired an ingenious solution. A pioneering institute in Norway has developed a successful process of human miniaturisation and the benefits are enormous. There could be plenty of room for everyone. Food and fuel supplies would stretch much further and a self-sustaining community of the small makes only a tiny impact on a polluted planet. Think of the shrinkage in plastic use. As long as you don’t become a plaything for a normal-sized cat, it is inspired.
Years pass and the idea takes off commercially. Mild-mannered occupational therapist Paul (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) decide to join America’s number one micro-community Leisureland. If nothing else, it will save them an absolute fortune, making the American Dream much more affordable. In Payne’s gentle, mocking film, an altruistic urge to save the planet is not quite incentive enough.
Downsizing generates some modest chuckles at a world in which little and large communities strive to live in perfect harmony. There are big issues to confront such as whether little people deserve a full vote.
However, the film gets bogged down in the fate of Paul as he suffers doubts, loneliness and a real sense of anxiety. Has he done the right thing? Will he ever find true happiness?
Damon is a solid, dependable presence as the bumbling, doughy Paul. He makes the character an endearingly flawed, ordinary man trying to find some way to connect with all the joys and sorrows, small pleasures and big emotions of human life.
His discontent becomes the starting point of an epic journey, encouraged by self-satisfied, hedonistic upstairs neighbour Dusan, played in a slightly mannered, overly familiar manner by Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz. Paul also finds himself inspired by industrious Vietnamese activist Ngoc Lan, infused with real energy and fizz by Hong Chau who doesn’t just steal individual scenes but runs away with the entire film.
Paul’s personal journey provides the backbone of a long, cluttered story that tries to pack too much in and starts to feel as if it is drifting along on unpredictable tides and hoping to carry you with it.
You admire the ambitious storytelling and the craftsmanship of its execution. The central idea never seems ridiculous and the special effects are never intrusive. The whole film is filled with clever ideas, whimsical distractions and poker-faced comic moments. However, it never quite gels into a convincing whole.
eARLy MAN (Cert PG; 89mins)
THE giant leap forward for the human race wasn’t the ability to make fire or the invention of the printing press. It was discovering the beautiful game of football. That’s the theory in Early Man, the latest endearingly silly animated feature from Wallace And Gromit maestro Nick Park.
Eddie Redmayne provides the voice of Dug, a gormless, well-meaning caveman who could have been an ancestor of Frank Spencer. Dug is all at sea when he encounters the shiny wonders of the Bronze Age and sneaky Lord Nooth (Tom Hiddleston sounding very like Sacha Baron Cohen) tricks him into deciding the fate of his tribe via a football match.
Nooth believes he has an advantage with his elite team of conceited sporting legends. Dug and his tribe have never even played the game but they have a