IT'S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL....BQ PUTS 'DOWNSIZING' UNDER A MICROSCOPE....

Downsizing (2017)     After finally getting around to this one, we now understand what so pissed off film critics about it......

                Alexander Payne chose not to make the movie that critics pre-imagined before they ever sat down to watch a single frame of film.......

                 What they had in mind was closer to what the film delivers in its first half hour or so......a social satire liberally spiked with dry wit.....

                 But Payne had a far busier agenda in mind, multiple ideas to deal with.......and this involved pushing and twisting the film into all kinds of zig-zag curves...(and a variety of shifting moods and genres......finally settling on a climax that's not far removed from "It's A Wonderful Life")

                 Our advice:  do not approach this expecting a spiffy, snarky 135 minute SNL skit.....(even with the presence of Kristen Wiig and Jason Sudekis......and sidenote: we never, ever thought Wiig was the slightest bit funny on SNL, so we weren't expecting to laugh to begin with....)

                 At the beginning, at least, Payne has a measure of fun with the global economics of shrinking people into vast miniaturized communities........(like inflation in reverse, it turns your meager finances into vast fortunes......a dream-come-true for the Have Nots of the world to suddenly start living like the 1 per-centers....)

                But then Payne goes off and running in his own particular directions........this leaves poor Matt Damon in the thankless, reactive role of shlubby Everyman while the supporting actors around him go to town with bravura work -  including Hong Chau's celebrated performance as a legless Vietnam rebel, and the inevitable appearance of Christoph Waltz, doing his usual hammy shtick.....(Waltz has so perfected his routines, he's like the Euro-Walter Matthau...)

                 By the halfway point, Payne veers the movie into a grab-bag of concerns.....Third World oppression and misery (surprise, surprise.....slums hide behind the teeeny-weeny, ultra-rich Disney-fied suburbs)......and that surefire showstopper, worldwide climate apocalypse......

               Okay, so he didn't make our idea of a 'Downsizing' movie........he made his.

               Ya know what?  Breaking news to film critics:  That's what a truly talented film director does......he's not around to make the movie that Film Festival flunkies expected him to make.....

               And BQ thoroughly enjoyed taking this bumpy ride with Alexander Payne, even as he drove crazily into every side road he encountered.  3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)........(though we admit we pined a bit for the good old days of shrunk-people movies.....when, instead of Christoph Waltz, they had to deal with now-giant spiders and pussycats.....)