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

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

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

Full Review | Dec 6, 2023

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

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

Medium-sized disappointment...

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2021

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

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

Chau's performance is the film's highlight.

Full Review | 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

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | May 21, 2020

This movie ruined me.

Full Review | May 15, 2020

I physically hated this movie.

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | Mar 11, 2020

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

Full Review | 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.

Full Review | Jan 27, 2020

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

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

Thoughtful, imaginative and deeply compassionate.

Full Review | Oct 17, 2019

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

Full Review | Oct 10, 2019

Downsizing gets increasingly more devastating as it inches through its 135-minute duration, but reminds you that being human and compassionate has nothing to do with how big you are.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 2, 2019