Living it LARGE
TINY FOLKS' TALL ORDER
DOWNSIZING (15) WOULD you settle for a smaller life if you could live it large every day?
That’s the question posed by this intriguing sci-fi from Sideways director Alexander Payne.
It’s the near future and the planet is over-crowded, over-heated and more or less done with the human race.
Then a Norwegian scientist makes a discovery that could save us all.
His revolutionary “downsizing” process can literally reduce our carbon footprints. The catch is that the rest of us is reduced too.
A device permanently shrinks the average person to five inches high.
The main action takes place after around three per cent of the world’s population has signed up.
Resorts have opened to cater for smaller citizens, promising a life of luxury at appropriately reduced prices. And it’s the money, rather than the environment, that interests Paul (Matt Damon) and Audrey (Kristen Wiig) Safranek.
Fantasy
Paul meets a recently-reduced school pal (Jason Sudeikis) and is captivated by stories of Leisureland – an artificial city with mansions that cost the same as dolls’ houses and shops that sell diamond necklaces for less than $10.
For the intriguing first half, Payne’s usual deadpan tone makes the fantasy elements seem even more outlandish.
I expected the fantastic voyage to gather pace once we entered the resort. But Payne lets the sci-fi slide.
Paul meets Dusan (Christoph Waltz), a Serbian playboy who makes his money buying one luxury Cuban cigar and cutting it up into thousands of little ones for his tiny punters. This seems like another chance for Payne to mine his fantasy world. But Dusan’s role never develops beyond comic relief.
Then Paul befriends Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau) – a former Vietnamese activist who was shrunk against her will by her government.
Decent-but-dull Paul and the fire-cracker Vietnamese cleaner make a decent double act, but their slowburning romance would have worked equally well in a regular-sized city.
There are good things in this small package but the two genres don’t quite fit together. It’s a film caught between two relatively giant stools.