She takes care of everyone, bringing food to the hungry, medicine to the sick. Ngoc Lan lives in a rundown tenement complex outside the "Truman Show" walls of Leisureland. Through Ngoc Lan, Paul learns of the darker side of Leisureland, its rigid and racist class system, the built-in haves and have nots of our world make up Leisureland too. Paul instead is drawn to Ngoc Lan Tran ( Hong Chau), Dusan's Vietnamese cleaning lady (whose escape to America in a television box caused an international incident.) His party-hound Eurotrash upstairs neighbor Dusan Mirkovic ( Christoph Waltz, doing his typical schtick) tries to get him to have some fun with being small. (Unfortunately that also means Wiig has exited the movie.) Paul now must make it through Smallville on his own. These details support a logical universe (it would have been funny to see some of the disastrous early attempts to "go small," a tiny man trailing a beard 20 miles long, etc.) When Paul wakes up in the recovery rooms of Leisureland, he learns that Audrey backed out at the last minute. People's gold teeth must be removed, otherwise their heads would explode during downsizing. They're imaginative and funny and detailed. The "downsizing" process is shown in intriguing detail, and make up the best sequences in the film. (Welcome to the club, Paul and Audrey.) They decide to go for it, applying for a spot at Leisureland, a "downsized" community in New Mexico, hyped up to hopeful applicants with a promotional video starring married couple Jeff and Laura Lonowski ( Neil Patrick Harris and Laura Dern), both wearing ear-mikes, doing marital "banter" in their echoing McMansion the size of a dollhouse about how awesome life is once you go small. The biggest problem Paul and Audrey have in their lives is that they want a bigger house but can't afford it. Paul's friend Dave ( Jason Sudeikis) sits perched on a box of cookies on the kitchen counter, telling Paul-who hovers over him like a giant-how great it is to live a life of leisure with no financial worries. "Downsized" communities crop up everywhere, with governments giving tax credit incentives to those who choose to go small.Īn Omaha-based occupational therapist named Paul ( Matt Damon) and his aspirational wife Audrey ( Kristen Wiig) wonder if they should "go small" after chatting with some friends who took the leap. Within a couple of years, "downsizing"-as the procedure is called-has swept the planet. If human beings take up less space, create less of a carbon footprint, make less trash, then perhaps the planet can be saved. The discovery is hailed as a revolution and a possible answer to the climate change emergency. The film takes place in an era not too far in the future when a group of scientists in Norway have figured out a way to shrink human beings into five-inch-tall versions of themselves.
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