Strangely deviating from its own fascinating concept of small people, the second half of the film shouts bewildering environmental and political messages befitting more a climate or migration documentary.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 9, 2024

A smart premise is reduced to groan-inducing humor and languishing unintelligence.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 7, 2024

Downsizing thinks it has big ideas, but artistically and intellectually, it’s as small as its protagonists.

| Dec 6, 2023

Payne stretches the film for well over two hours and never quite realizes the possibilities of his central conceit.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 16, 2022

Medium-sized disappointment...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 29, 2021

Downsizing sticks in one's memory less because of the depth of its analysis than its slightly muddled, chaotic, well-meaning, bemused, troubled concern for humanity and its future.

| Feb 21, 2021

For all its ingenuity gets bogged down in its second half.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 3, 2021

Chau's performance is the film's highlight.

| Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 6, 2020

[Downsizing]doesn't quite compensate for the placidity and silliness of Paul's core existential crises, or his flirtation with deterministic serendipity

| Aug 13, 2020

By the standards of an experienced writer/director no less, Downsizing is an aggravating, half-baked idea with no teeth in its mouth and no end in sight.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jul 23, 2020

Every choice leads down the most boring, self-indulgent path, and the destination is this empty void of a movie.

| Original Score: D+ | Jul 1, 2020

The story and its metaphorical messages about life aren't difficult to decipher. It's that I didn't care enough about most of the characters to want to embrace anything they were trying to say.

| May 21, 2020

This movie ruined me.

| May 15, 2020

I physically hated this movie.

| May 15, 2020

Downsizing fails because it is neither fish nor fowl. It can't commit as a science-fiction film and it never becomes the biting social satire the first act seems to intimate.

| Mar 11, 2020

Too bad Hong Chau's character showed up so late in the film, she could have possibly saved it...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 27, 2020

By far director Alexander Payne's worst film to date, it has plots for about five movies, all undercooked.

| Jan 27, 2020

Despite its clever premise, certain cliché plot elements make Downsizing predictable and ironically, unoriginal.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2019

Thoughtful, imaginative and deeply compassionate.

| Oct 17, 2019

Alexander Payne may have started this project with big ambitions, but, unfortunately this film caused us to downsize our expectations.

| Oct 10, 2019