Downsizing

All those disparate elements fail to gel.

While Downsizing is not not about the end of human life on earth, it confronts the prospect with minimal sentiment, and uses it to ask questions about what the good life might consist of, here and now.

With his latest film, Alexander Payne finds himself teetering uncomfortably atop a high-concept device and wrestling with tonal clashes.

It offers a jumble of barely explored, quarter-baked ideas attached to a laborious plot.

It starts out quick, sharp and funny and ends as a solemn and slow-moving leviathan: a movie overwhelmed by its own ecological and human implications ...

Dare we say that this once admired indie writer-director, who made Exhibition, Sideways and About Schmidt, is developing a humourless streak?

Strangely deviating from its own fascinating concept of small people, the second half of the film shouts bewildering environmental and political messages befitting more a climate or migration documentary.

A smart premise is reduced to groan-inducing humor and languishing unintelligence.

Downsizing thinks it has big ideas, but artistically and intellectually, it’s as small as its protagonists.

Payne stretches the film for well over two hours and never quite realizes the possibilities of his central conceit.