Downsizing
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: December 22, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
27
Mixed:
18
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 26, 2018
This long film is blisteringly brilliant for the first hour or so. Then there are shark-jumping issues. Read full review
60
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 30, 2017
As for Paul, you can’t help feeling that, ground down as he was, he didn’t need to get shrunk in the first place. He needed a shrink. Read full review
60
VoxAlissa WilkinsonDec 21, 2017
The overstuffed Downsizing doesn’t totally work, but when it does, it’s fascinating. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 21, 2017
It's hard not to appreciate the visual and thematic scope of "Downsizing's" reach. But it's harder not to see the chasm between its strange, misshapen story and the grand, towering vision to which it aspires. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 21, 2017
Downsizing is an ambitious movie about the value of modesty, and its faults are proportionate to its insights. I sort of wish it felt like a bigger deal, but maybe that’s my problem. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaDec 19, 2017
I appreciate that Payne is more interested in blowing out a middle-class American perspective, and its perpetual victimhood narrative. But Damon is completely forgettable here — I suspect that’s by design, but nothing about him commands you watch him the way you watch Chau or Waltz. Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 21, 2017
Alexander Payne has a great idea with Downsizing and doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 22, 2017
It’s a movie in which too-muchness ends up being not-enoughness, since the script lacks a vital center. But the premise remains appealing. If you have to travel by air, being 5 inches tall makes a seat in economy a throne. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 22, 2017
Downsizing never quite goes where you think it’s going, and normally, I’d say that’s a plus. But confounding expectations only goes so far. You still have to get to a place worth getting to. Read full review
50
New York PostSara StewartDec 20, 2017
Squanders its big ideas in record time. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 20, 2017
The film’s ultimate message — help other people, basically — is, while useful and necessary, dramatically rather slack, and you notice with a shock that the film’s central conceit has almost entirely dropped off the table by the final third. Payne’s microcosm is so like our macrocosm that after a while he simply forgets to make the distinction. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 19, 2017
Every scene — the pointed and the pointless — goes on too long. No character is wholly motivated or explained. Read full review
50
IGNWilliam BibbianiDec 19, 2017
It’s not very funny, it’s not very dramatic. There’s a spark of intelligence here, a valid critique of doomsday culture and escapism, but it’s the sort of message you can easily get off of a cocktail napkin. Read full review
50
ScreenCrushE. Oliver WhitneySep 13, 2017
Downsizing is all half-empty, big ideas that accomplish very little. Read full review
50
ConsequenceSarah KurchakSep 11, 2017
Payne’s heart might have been in the right place with this one, but the execution feels flippant at best. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Sep 7, 2017
Alexander Payne’s science-fiction comedy Downsizing is less a fully formed satire than a clever idea stuck in first draft and stretched uncomfortably to feature length. Read full review
40
The AtlanticDavid SimsDec 22, 2017
All of Downsizing’s story elements are so audacious that I was rooting for Payne to make some narrative sense of them. But in two hours and 15 minutes, the only insight the movie offers is that stagnation is part of existence, and that while we probably can’t stop the world from ending with unbelievable scientific breakthroughs, all that matters is that humans are there for each other. Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 31, 2017
As medium-grade satire (hardly another The Truman Show), Downsizing works fine enough. But it makes a series of wrong moves that throw off the delicate tone, raising the pretension levels to toxic. Read full review
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