good idea, worst implementation. Nothing happens in the fipm, except a couple of jokes. Story is boring as hell.

the movie started out slow, in the middle of the movie it was slow, and the end of the movie was even slower.

The movie is a surprise, the good kind, an instance of a filmmaker zigging just when you’re expecting him to zag.

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.

Ty Burr

Boston Globe

One part relationship comedy, one part existential human drama, one part environmental warning and, regrettably, one part white-saviour myth, Alexander Payne’s Downsizing is a beautiful, confounding creation.

Barry Hertz

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)