Downsizing (2017)

As a teenager, I read an awful lot of science fiction. I had a library ticket that (I think) allowed me to borrow five books at a time. I always borrowed up to my limit, and normally read everything I had borrowed before next visiting the library.

We used to go once a week.

At the time, I read principally science fiction and fantasy - the occasional thriller, but largely I read in those two genres. That meant that I was exposed to the science fiction greats (Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick), the not-so-well-known-out-of-science-fiction-circles (Poul Anderson, Clifford D Simak, Theodore Sturgeon), along with some names that barely anyone has ever read (and whose names I've long forgotten).

Watching Downsizing felt like a return to those days of cramming my brain with those tales. It makes only a few concessions to actual science (mostly consisting of - scientists have figured out a way to ...), which fits perfectly with those pulpy tales when a strange gas with shrinking properties could cause a man to reduce to subatomic size.

For being able to rekindle that sense of wonder, I probably view Downsizing far more favourably than it really deserves. Although it's an entertaining pieces, with the performances being at worst bizarre, but never actually bad, the story is unfortunately all over the place. It's second half is written as if the author had too many ideas of where the story could go that he decided to throw them all at the screen and see if anything stuck.

There is a sense of a personal journey for the lead character, one that finds some degree of resolution, but it's a film which asks a lot of questions that it then largely ignores. Which is a shame, because any one of them could have been an interesting film in its own right.