Matt Damon is one of my favorite actors of all time. That being said, i think his performance in Downsizing is one of the weakest of the entire cast. I suppose you can't do A+ work all the time.
A sci-fi film of sorts, Downsizing revolves around the scientific discovery that any living thing can be reduced in size thousands of times without any ill-effects. The benefits of being shrunk down to 5 inches tall are plentiful, the main one of which is that life becomes considerably less expensive. People who were struggling financially suddenly find themselves being capable of living a lavish lifestyle, but of course these worlds must be contained and they will now rarely interact with "normal sized" people.
It seems as though everyone lives a life of frivolity in these communities, until Dave Johnson (Damon) discovers through chance that the poor do in-fact exist in these communities and they live in the same squalor that exist in the normal-sized world.
This is where we meet Ngoc Lan Tran, a cleaner with an artificial leg who is brilliantly played by Hong Chau. Her cute, sometimes brash, and unintentionally humorous method of depicting a Vietnamese woman who gets straight to the point with her pidgin English, is easily the best character and acting in the movie. This Vietnamese cleaning woman, despite living in near poverty, seems to enjoy life a lot more than Dave does, and he ends up learning a lot about life from her.
She ended up getting nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance and she definitely deserved it.
Perhaps I found this more amusing that most people would because most of the English-as-a-second-language Asians that I meet speak in a similar fashion to Ngoc Lan Tran and I am quite certain that I sound the same way (but in reverse) when I speak Thai as a second language.
The film lost a ton of money against its $70 million budget and I don't understand why. I suppose it might be because the "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" theme just isn't interesting to people. I know I wouldn't have bothered if it hadn't featured Matt Damon.
from the official [Paramount Pictures] websiteI've said it before about Hollywood, but they do seem to be incapable of making a film without slipping some sort of PC, political message, into just about anything made these days, and that is definitely apparent in this movie. I'm not gonna say what it is but when you get to it, maybe you will have a eureka! moment and then roll your eyes the way I did.
I enjoyed this movie, mostly because it seemed like a wonderful concept that I would definitely take part in if the technology existed. It was released in 2017 and completely passed me by without having ever heard of it. I guess that is what Netflix is for these days.
