10 Movies That Abandoned Awesome Ideas Halfway Through

Alexander Payne's Downsizing had so, so much potential on paper - a social satire about a couple (Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig) who decide to literally shrink themselves as part of an experiment intended to combat overpopulation and global warming.

And in the early going Payne's film is a real hoot, offering up an unsubtle yet pithily entertaining commentary on the cost of living in the modern world, all while Damon's character has to deal with the fact that his wife backed out of the shrinking procedure at the last minute.

But Downsizing comes unstuck at almost exactly the half-way point when it introduces Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chau), a Vietnamese activist who was downsized against her will.

At this point Payne puts the fun scale dynamics to the backseat and instead focuses the rest of the movie on the relationship between Damon and Chau's characters, as well as an environmental catastrophe which threatens to wipe out the human race.

It ultimately feels like it strayed too far from the movie audiences were actually sold, and while the ambition is laudable, Downsizing falls off hard by the mid-point.