I remembered seeing ads for this movie about a year ago and I thought it was going to be some sort of goofy take on the whole shrinking society thing. I focused on Jason Sudeikis and Kristen Wiig, who usually make silly comedies, so I thought I want to watch this, but I am not in a hurry. I didn't even know Christoph Waltz was in this, he has quickly become one of my favorite actors, and of course Matt Damon always does fine work. The story starts in Norway or up there, where the peaceful white people live, and a scientist has just discovered how to shrink lab rats. It fast forwards and there is a big conference and the first "tiny people" are introduced to the world. This is treated just as news on a CNN type coverage here in the US and we see a young Damon looking with interest as he works delivering food. He lives with his mom, she looks to be on her last legs, complaining about fibromyalgia and all her shortcomings. Damon is a good son and takes care of his mother, we learn from the story, he was going to medical school but dropped out to care for her, and he ended up becoming an occupational therapist.
Fast forward a couple more years and he is still in the same house, still doing the same routine of coming in late in the evening with some food, but now he has a weak ass wife who has taken the place of his mom and she is complaining of neck pains and what not. At this point, I started feeling sorry for the Damon character, but is he living this life from his own choosing? Did he pick a partner who would put him right back to being the caretaker? The thought came about because just the night before, Wife was telling Boy, "you know you are dating your mother as we can tell your girlfriend is a Ball Buster?" I have always said the same thing that Wife and I work well because she is basically like my mother "she takes care of business."
Anyways, in the movie, they are having financial problems and one thing leads to another, there is a class reunion with one of his classmates becoming a "small" and then they go house hunting and determine they can't really afford what she wants. After this, they decide to look into becoming small. The allure is too much as their assets which total a paltry $150,000 converts to $12 million dollars in the tiny world. They could basically shrink themselves, move into a mansion and retire like millionaires. It seems too good to be true. They agree to it.
If anyone deserves to kill their wife, this seemed like a good enough reason, while they are separated into a men's and women's hallway, he goes through it, she doesn't. Like a pathetic asshole, she has a breakdown, even though this was mostly her idea, it was her ass that wanted to live nicer, she leaves him over the phone, as he is sitting there on the recovery bed, standing 4-5 inches tall. There is one sad scene of him in this huge mansion on a couple acres, then he is living in an apartment complex, and the kicker, he is right back to doing shit work, as his asshole wife left him with nothing, he has to work to pay his way. Life looks sad for him and it is, almost settling with the first single mother who will date him, but she decides he is too sorry to move along.
He decides to go to a party at his neighbors, this is where Waltz joins the movie, I love this guy. He is some sort of European, a little sleazy, a little charming, he talks a good talk, telling Damon how he likes him but he basically needs to man up and take charge of his life or it will keep walking all over him. Damon takes offense to this, but Waltz retorts with "the world needs assholes, we allow the shit to come out." Even Javalina liked this line. The movie is actually a little long, but it is in his penthouse apartment that he meets this Vietnam woman who escaped her country in a TV box and had become a bit of a celebrity, a few years back. She is a humanitarian and driven like you would not believe. They don't write characters like hers in the movies, she was like wow, even as she lost a leg in the ordeal of getting to America and she was the only survivor of like 17 "smalls" in that box.
The Damon character tries to help her, or her walking, he can tell her implant is poorly made, and she quickly sucks him into her world, as he tends to be that kind of guy, anyway. As bad as he seemed to be living, he soon finds the ghetto of "small" living. They are not even living under the special "bubble" that protects them from birds and insects, their is a break in the wall and they live in a shantytown under a large net with typical poor Mexican kids playing soccer in the dirt and the apartments looking like stripped plywood barely slapped together.
There is still a lot of storyline to go, maybe the movie was a little long, but I enjoyed it much more this way, than if it had been a stupid comedy, as I thought it was. Damon finally found love and a purpose, even if took him getting down to 4 inches tall. I loved it.
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