'DOWNSIZING' IRONICALLY ENLARGES AN OBVIOUS AGENDA

Year Released: 2017

Since The Environment is so important —  and supposedly right at the tipping point for the world's demise... why does Alexander Payne's DOWNSIZING spend so much time and money on trailers and commercials misleading audiences that it's a fun and frolicking science-fiction comedy starring Matt Damon and Kristin Wiig (the latter who's hardly in the picture at all)?

It should be right up front if their cause belongs to everybody. Instead, the stage is set for a near-future society that, in order to save tons of money while helping to "save the Earth," shrinks willing people down to five inches. When certain characters bring the environmental message up, it's usually with shrugged sarcasm — as if to get that out of the way in order for the Matt Damon Romantic Comedy to begin...

DownScore: *1/2

Yet even the first act isn't funny, and unlike Payne's road movies ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS and NEBRASKA, the movie has nowhere to go...

Without the title ingredient that's supposed to make this an ironic and quirky, futuristic what-if semi-satire, DOWNSIZING would be a bleeding heart without a body...

Even a few potentially interesting scenes with a crippled Vietnamese woman (who becomes a sidekick) spouting blunt comments at Damon's shy protagonist are blurred and then buried by the social message more obvious than even TOMORROWLAND...

So here's hoping the otherwise brilliant director Alexander Payne got all the overboard Left Wing sermonizing out of his system, and create more indies about people to care about instead of what feels like an overlong prelude to a Global Warning disaster flick. As far as being preachy goes, this is tops... And they say religious people deal in narrow-minded Absolutes in a corny and contrived fashion.