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    Alexander Payne's sci-fi satire 'Downsizing' grapples with big ideas and (extra) tiny characters

    by Josh Rottenberg, Los Angeles Times Dec 27, 2017 5 minutes

    With his new film "Downsizing," Alexander Payne - the director of such critically acclaimed, sharp-edged comedies as "Election," "About Schmidt," "Sideways" and "The Descendants" - is going big by going small.

    Set in a near-future in which scientists hoping to avert a global environmental catastrophe have figured out how to shrink people down to 5 inches in size, the film centers on a mild-mannered Midwestern Everyman named Paul Safranek (Matt Damon). After undergoing the miniaturization procedure, Safranek meets a similarly Liliputian but fiery-spirited disabled Vietnamese dissident named Ngoc Lan Tran (Golden Globe and SAG Award nominee Hong Chau) and sets off on a profoundly life-changing adventure.

    You know, one of those movies.

    With a reported $68-million budget, the sci-fi social satire represents an audacious gamble both for Payne and Paramount Pictures, which is releasing it.

    "(The film's success) depends on whether

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