There are movies that fail without knowing it, there are movies that fail while knowing it and then there's Downsizing (2017). It neither fails nor succeeds nor knows what it wants to accomplish, leaving the average viewer absolutely lost in the mire of botched plot threads, meaningless visuals and horrible characters with grating accents. Amidst all of it is — Matt Damon.
I can best describe Matt Damon's character by quoting him:
I am Paul Sofranek and what you were asking? It was a love fuck.
Now you know his name, that there's a love interest, that he messes up and then fesses up and that there was passionless sex involved. The love interest he so lovingly told about his "love fuck" is a Vietnamese woman with the sex appeal of a wet sock and a thick accent that cuts like a scimitar, and she is a political dissident who had her leg amputated. The two meet in the apartment of Dušan, a quazi-Serbian character who does kiss on the cheeks thrice but is otherwise just a generic Slav asshole and does not speak Serbian. Oh boy, all right, I guess I should explain the plot.
The world has found a way to miniaturize people by 99%, reducing them to 5 inches in height. That would mean these people were at least 5x100=500 inches = 1250 centimeters = 12,5 meters high. The "5 inches" isn't just a background detail, it's specifically mentioned by the protagonist as how tall he is, so how they got it wrong, I have no idea. All right, whatever, the scriptwriters suck at math, let's move on. The Norwegian inventor who did it presents it as a great way to save the environment, which people apparently adopt without asking any questions, such as what the side effects are.
Our dude, Paul, and his wife, Audrey Lustig Sofranek, decide they can't keep up with the Joneses unless they downsize. They talk about living a great life once they go small and so on. That means liquidating all their assets, which will net them a gigantic mansion in Leisureland, which I am assuming is meant to hint at Disneyland. This place is domed but how they keep it safe from pranksters, wild animals, insects or just rogue elements, I have no idea.
Paul goes through the procedure but Audrey doesn't (spoilers, I guess), leaving him stranded. She then divorces him and forces him to sell the mansion, so he moves to an apartment and takes up a call center job. By the way, Paul is an occupational therapist, helping people regain movement of limbs after chronic injury, such as carpal tunnel. He starts dating a single mom, who freaks out when he goes in for a kiss and scampers off.
Paul meets his neighbor, Dušan, who became a millionaire selling mini-cigars (???). OK, I guess. He gets high for the first time in his life at Dušan's party and wakes up to a nasty, grating, heavy-as-neutron-star accent by Tran, the Vietnamese dissident I mentioned at the start. She lost her leg below the knee so he helps her and they have sex. He also breaks her prosthetic and so she shames him into working for her in house cleaning until it's repaired.
She then takes Paul to the slums, because this exotic downsizing process is also applied to dirt-poor people, where he diagnoses and, I suppose, heals people by promising them medicine, which I have no idea how he gets. The two bond for whatever reason and Dušan, who ribbed him for being pathetic, now invites him over to the original Norwegian colony of downsized people. Yeah, remember the plot premise, that of a revolutionary process that minimizes people?
Besides a few visual jokes referring to it, there's absolutely no plot-related development that happens exclusively because of minimization. This movie is just a social drama about a therapist cleaning houses with a Vietnamese cripple, and not even a particularly poignant one at that. She never appears smart or even wise, just obnoxius and rude. Also, her accent is so sharp, I could feel it shear my neurons, and the critics pointed out the same issue.
In the middle of saving underprivileged people, Dušan invites the two of them to visit the Norwegian scientist. There, they mingle with the original batch of minimized people, who live on the coast of a fjord, because there's no predators in Norway, I guess. At that point, we get to hear some of the most absurd lines of dialog in movie history. Listen to it yourself, if you dare.
In the audio, you can hear the screeching lady greet Dušan before telling Paul he was a horse in her dream and she rode him through a forest. She also refers to going "in there" and invites him to see. This is the final plot twist of the movie — the original colony has been preparing for the end of the world scenario mentioned at the start in passing, which just so happens to occur as Paul arrives to the colony. It's nothing bombastic, just methane release by the melting ice caps (????). There's methane in ice? OK, whatever, let's move on.
So, Paul now hears about the underground bunker these original minimized people have been preparing to weather the apocalypse. Where did they get the tiny trucks, boring machines and equipment? He gets invited as well and for some reason wracks his brain about it. He enters this infinite tunnel, where all the little people are walking to the bunker. Why they don't have at the very least miniature bikes, I have no idea. By the way, bikes are among the most efficient modes of transport, requiring only 10 Wh per kilometer.
There's minimized horses and sheep as well in the colony, along with minimized everything, including houses, benches, horse carts etc. The movie is explicit about only organic matter being downsizable, so how these little people made their tools, we'll never know. Paul enters the tunnel and starts walking. He asks a black guy how long the walk will take. The black guy says something like "15 hours". Paul gets nervous and runs back to the door, which is being shut for good (????). He manages to rush through before it closes and in the arms of his Vietnamese harpy, where he delivers the "love fuck" line.
Dušan and his brother who had like 2 lines of dialog, Srđan, decide to not go to the bunker because the people in there will go mad and kill each other. In Dušan's opinion, the apocalyse is overblown and there's no need to worry about it. The four of them go back to Leisureland, where Paul delivers a meal to a hapless Spanish bum in the slum. He takes a look at him, Tran honks in the car outside and the movie fades to black.
That's it, the movie simply ends, without any resolution, without any satisfaction or even a hint of what happened to the bunker people, to the methane release, to Audrey, to Tran's foot, Dušan or Srđan. We get NOTHING.
Matt, how much were you in debt that you had to take up this role? Were the mobsters threatening you? This is an insult to the actor profession. The movie does nothing with Matt Damon, explores no concepts related to any plot point or character or goes anywhere. For example, Tran was a dissident who protested a dam being built in Vietnam. This is mentioned and then never explored or expanded on at all. Why mention it then?
Dušan's cigar business, the girl who gave Paul drugs at the party, Audrey, voting rights of the little people; it's all hinted at and dropped. For example, one guy says to Paul before downsizing that these little people shouldn't be able to vote or they should have a quarter of a vote, which is an interesting idea. Explore that, play with it, make us think about the world from a different perspective. Nope, it's a divorce drama with an eco plot tacked on. Ugh.