Downsizing

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🎙️ EPISODE 613: 12.06.22 And so we conclude this impromptu Director Focus on Alexander Payne with his most recent and easily most divisive feature, the somewhat directionless, if not fully genre-less Downsizing. Teaming up with screenwriting partner Jim Taylor again for the first time since Sideways (and first time working on a non-adaptation since their debut), this ends up being more frustrating than enjoyable. Though, in select moments — thanks to a great cast (Udo Kier is in this for crying out loud) — it's definitely fun. After a surprisingly strong start overall, it finishes with a pretty abysmal final act. I can forgive all the sub-par CGI (as that's never meant to be the focus), but I can't forgive the straight-up bad writing in this ending.

Whether or not you perceive the underlying subject matter and themes as "woke" or not is immaterial to me. The climate change stuff almost seems like an ingenious red herring for Payne and Taylor to yet again dissect the real problem of modern life: the flawed nature of capitalism and our never-ending supply of (also mostly flawed and often very comical) reactions to the ills it brings about. I swear there's a pretty great movie in here somewhere if only they'd leaned into some of the sensibilities of their early black comedy work and left the totally unneeded dramatic and romantic elements on the cutting room floor.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 613A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 614 ⫸

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Downsizing is a 2017 American science fiction comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by Payne and Jim Taylor, and starring Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, and Kristen Wiig. It tells the story of Paul Safrânek, who decides to undergo a recently-invented procedure to shrink his body so he can start a new life in an experimental community, which he ends up doing alone when his wife backs out at the last minute; his journey takes an unexpected turn after he befriends an impoverished activist. It was released on August 30, 2017.