AQs suggested above, this was a rather irritating film due to a marked lack of direct ion or tone. It started as what might have been a nicely black satire, where the technology to shrink living things to a small fraction of their original volume (the driving idea being to reduce resource consumption) and so allow the shrunken to live a far wealthier lifestyle than usually available. I am not quite sure how the economics of this would have worked – this seemed to be a bit of a hole – and the fact that this occurred to me suggests that my level of engagement with the film, from the start was not a intense as it should have been.
There was one brief interesting scene early on in the normal-sized world where an individual who was prejudiced against the shrunken confronted the central character in a bar. They were arguing that they were not worthy of full voting rights as they only contributed a much smaller proportion to society –an intriguing idea that, in a different film, could have been a very interesting exploration to make. But it was a road not taken.
Once in the shrunken world, there was a period of dramatic treading water but then the central character became aware that this very comfortable society was, as in the normal sized world, supported by a poor underclass, who shrinking was not necessarily a matter of choice but used as a punishment . This was only the case for the one central character however, a Vietnamese activist whom Damon ended up helping and supporting, making use of his partial medical (occupational therapy) skills.
This developing relationship turned out to be, if not the, main focus, certainly as far as character development was concerned. But then in the latter/last part of the film, where they went to the original shrunken community, a brand new, very ecologically proper idea was introduced, viz. the creation of an underground self-supporting ‘ark’ as increasing methane release from the melting arctic ice cap meant that the destruction of humanity was inevitable. And the ending, as far as the main characters and their development was concerned, was pretty sentimental and unconvincingly fuzzy.
So, a film that both tried to do too much (in darting down various dramatic paths but never satisfyingly following them to their conclusion) and too little (in not having a clear and effective dramatic focus. Interesting and unusual, but finally, unsatisfying.