A Tale of Two Movies: Shrink Rays and Showmen

How can two movies I saw just two days apart be so different? ‘Cuz it’s 2018 and what’s playing in cinemas is ALL across the board. Yay! This may just be me, but lately I’ve been aware of such an assortment of movies out there, it’s like the box office has been turned into one of those box of chocolates, each with a varying centre, flavor and texture. As a chocoholic and an avid cinema goer to that my reply is a resounding YAAAAAAS. Here’s a look at those two films. One, a stunner. The other, a bummer!

Downsizing

Matt Damon headlines this dram-com saga where he opts to shrink down to five inches with his wife Aubrey (Kristen Wiig) and join the “downsizing” craze that’s sweeping the nation. Both Paul (Damon) and Aubrey are unhappy with the boring routine of their daily grind decide that it’s time to do something crazy. Forget the tiny houses movement, the couple wants to go tiny ALL the way.

Overpopulation leads Norwegian scientists to develop the technology to “downsize” human beings and zealously create micro communities. One of the biggest appeals about going small is that those who undergo the surgery get more bang for their buck. Yes. The value of their money skyrockets when they downsize, making it possible to have a more lavish house and lifestyle!

When Aubrey decides to back out last minute, Paul having already undergone the irreversible process is stuck in smallville with nary a superman in sight. The comedy that was promised in the trailers winks through in a few small scenes- one featuring Neil Patrick Harris hamming it up in front of an audience, and another with the teeny tiny people being scooped off their pallets by spatulas after being shrunk. But it’s nothing laugh out loud.

Paul’s life falls into a monotonous pattern where he spends his days moping around wearing middle-aged dad clothes and working in a cubicle in a call centre for Land’s End. For more than a quarter into the film we have just him, slumping around the screen. Umm most fun movie ever? Suuuuuure. That is, until one night his famous party hardy upstairs neighbor Dusan (Christoph Waltz) invites him up for a riotous night.

Reeling from his cray cray night, Paul catches Dusan’s squad of Merry Maids tackling the after party clean up, and he meets Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau): a Vietnamese refugee who survived a terrible ordeal in Vietnamese prison who’s hella famous, almost more so than Dusan. This broken-English speaking beauty who was downsized by her country (as a punishment for her environmental activism) is the sole survivor escape to freedom in a TV box- a widely televised bombshell that shook the nation. Sooo why is she scrubbing toilets?

Because money, even though being worth more, still isn’t enough for the people who have well...none to begin with. Especially for Ngoc Lan Tran who had serious surgery -almost her entire leg amputated-  and an epic hospital stay.

Ngoc Lan’s spunky and honest personality opens Paul’s eyes that downsizing isn’t the paradise and land of opportunity it’s painted as. There are still those who struggle financially and get by in low income neighborhoods cast far away from the sparkle and shine of the upper-middle class haven-- pushed up at the very edge of the micro community barrier.  Ngoc lives here, out of sight  in one of the grimiest, most crowded, sardine packed, apartment complexes.

It’s empowering and refreshing to see a young Asian American woman in a lead role -- they’re women and men of colour who have the least representation in tv and movies -- but Ngoc Lan is burdened by broken English. Her heavy accent is played for laughs. While it does make sense for a Vietnamese villager it’s twisted into what feels like an excessive farce. At first it feels authentic but as Downsizing progresses it’s hard to not wince whenever Ngoc Lan opens her mouth.

Downsizing zooms to Seriousville around this time. The conundrum here isn’t just whether shrinking down to a minute size and living in a tiny community is the right decision- the movie itself is having an identity crisis. It doesn’t know if it wants to be a comedy or a serious social commentary. Some mashups are glorious. Umm brownie-cookies anyone? Others are erm...not so appealing. Downsizing, I regret to say, is the latter! It’s an underwhelming journey in a world that could be fascinating, but instead is just ordinary, with an anemic storyline and plot and a perpetually unhappy Matt Damon.

The Greatest Showman

Get Wolverine out of your head. Hugh Jackman trades in his adamantium claws for a top hat and coattails. This dazzling, foot-stomping musical is flashy, bold and sexy, not mutant, Marvel and X-Meny!

Inspired by Phineas Taylor “P.T.” Barnum, who in the 19th century was one of the most famous men in America, and the writings about his illustrious life as an entertainer, The Greatest Showman begins at well the beginning. It goes from Young Phineas’s (Ellis Ruben)impoverished childhood as a tailor's son with broken shoes barely on his feet, to years later when P.T. is wed to his childhood sweetheart Charity (Michelle Williams) and is a boisterous father to two darling little girls who opens up a museum of curiosities. His last evolution in The Greatest Showman culminates in his turn as a charismatic ringmaster headlining a spectacular show like no other.

Liberties have DEFINITELY been taken with the history of the story, but it’s only fitting for P.T. Barnum a man who fudged and embellished details for much of his life. Entertainment was his business, smiles, laughs and joy the currency he preferred above all else. Jackman throws himself entirely into the role of the Barnum. He gleefully launches into rousing song and dance numbers and has a megawatt enthusiasm that makes him endlessly exciting to follow on screen. His vibrant personality halos around him like a glow, even when he hits his low points (of which he has a fair few!) and his good intentions don’t wane. He’s authentic and eager to please, and  never seems like a deceptive snake oil salesman type character.

It would be only too easy for the characters -many of them based off of real life men and women from Barnum’s history- to shift into caricatures. But they never lose their sense of self and purpose, striding through not just the fantastical musical numbers together-- each showing off their different talents, but also they are enough on their own--as separate entities from the other performers. What starts off as a troupe of “freaks” becomes a show that draws audience from all over the city, and eventually, catches the attention of Queen Victoria herself. The performers that get the most screen time and have the most astounding musical numbers are: Phillip Carlyle a fabulously wealthy playwright (Zac Efron) who Barnum convinces to join his show, and becomes his protege a character; a pink-wig-wearing trapeze artist Anne Wheeler (Zendaya); and Lettie Lutz, the bearded lady (Keala Settle) who packs wallops of emotion in her singing.

The lyrics are unflinching looks at what it means to be an outsider, to be an anomaly, a freak, or undesired by the community at large. Their appearances-- whether they’re tattooed from face to feet with intricate designs; carpeted with more hair than a dog; built of a dwarfish stature, or towering above the other cityfolk larger than Harry Potter’s famous gamekeeper Hagrid-- are what makes them who they are. It starts off what repels them from society. But with each splendid musical number, louder, brighter, and more riotious than the next showcases how they turn it into their greatest strength.

Forget that La La Land “City of Stars” track. Efron and Zendaya are a dynamic duo in their song “Rewrite the Stars”which is a swooping display of acrobatics and lyrics that make our heart soar as high as they fly. The song and the performance, an act that Zendaya trained months for, pulses with passion and energy, leaving us breathless.

Like a master magician Barnum wielded his illusions as reality snagging hundreds of fans— who crossed over to his fantastical world from the gray monotony of urban 19th century life. The imagination hi introduced to his audience a welcome change from their day to day drudgery.  Critics have bashed The Greatest Showman. Not just the morose and humorless entertainment reporter in the movie: James Gordon Bennett (Paul Sparks) but modern day 2018 critics have also dissed it as “peanuts”. How anyone could walk away from this fireworks show of imagination, unbridled joy and explosion of art, and NOT be smiling and buoyed up with pure happiness and adrenaline is beyond me.

The Greatest Showman is a sing-your-heart-out, dance-till-your-dizzy, stuck-in-your-head-for-days celebration of life, love, and the arts. The musical numbers, deftly crafted by award winning lyricists are delightful and soul-touching; the star-studded cast, dimensional and entirely committed to their roles; and an energy that leaves us buzzing with happiness for hours.

photos from IMDB.