Following the arrival of the teaser trailer last week, Paramount Pictures has gone on to release the full Downsizing trailer, giving us our first proper look at the miniaturised world that will be the focus of the film. It’s a pretty unusual trailer to take in with little in the way of clear hooks apart from the Honey I Shrink The Kids for adults story, but with positive reviews following it’s Venice and Toronto Film Festival screenings, it might go on to be a sleeper hit.
The trailer starts out with the set up announcement of the invention of a process to shrink people down to less than 1% of their normal size. Available to the public, it doesn’t take long for people to twig the economic benefits of Downsizing, as well as the environmental implications, and Paul and his wife Audrey decide to get in on the miniaturised action.
The trailer confirms that the procedure is irreversible, raising the stakes for anyone contemplating making the life-changing change, which kind of implies that there’s going to be a dramatic side to the film. You can see that Paul and Audrey go through with it anyway and the scene with them being scooped off their beds with hospital implements that look like pancake flippers is a pretty good indicator that there’s going to be ups and down for the couple.
It looks a bit like an interesting thought experiment brought to life at the moment, but with the positive reviews and talk of Academy Award nominations, we’re expecting a lot more than that. The CGI and special effects work well enough to deliver the concept behind Downsizing, so it’s really all going to come down to how the story develops and the performances from the cast.
Matt Damon (Suburbicon) has got a pretty good record when it comes to unconventional films and personal journeys with the likes of The Martian picking up his last Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. There’s not really enough in the trailer to give us a good indication that another award nomination is in the bag, so we’ll have to wait for the December 2017 release date to see how the film works out.
Kristen Wiig may not be all that well-known for serious drama, but there’s enough low-lying comedy to tap into her style of acting. However, she will also be starring in psychological horror Mother! later this year and her previous efforts in The Martian and The Skeleton Twins show that she can make the transition to more serious films as well as comedies like Ghostbusters and Despicable Me 3.
Christoph Waltz (Spectre) looks like he’s going to be a bit of an ageing Playboy as their downsize neighbour and Jason Sudeikis (Colossal) will be an early adopter of the technology who gives Paul advice about life in little terms. There are clearly a fair few real-life commentary elements to the Alexander Payne directed film, so it’s going to be interesting to see if he can pull all of the oddball elements together to deliver another impressive movie following the success of Sideways and Nebraska.
