A talented ballerina floundering in her career is forced to reevaluate everything when her scientist boyfriend accidentally (?) shrinks her.

SYNOPSIS:

AVA LI (20s) has danced her entire life. She’s watched every ballet movie from The Turning Point to The Red Shoes to Black Swan, and has very strong opinions on the merits of Gaynor Minden vs Freed shoes. Despite her devotion to the art, she and her best friend JANELLE (20s) find themselves stuck in the corps of Ballet Manhattan. Their creative director JEAN LUC (40s) always pushes them to audition for principal roles but they all know he’ll never promote them because he’s a Paris traditionalist and firmly believes in “visual uniformity.”

After a particularly disappointing audition and a night of (controlled and calorie-counted) drinking, Ava stumbles home to her tiny studio to find her aspiring scientist boyfriend PARKER (late 20s) in an entanglement with his faculty advisor, DR. MELINDA LOWELL (40s). After a very awkward interlude, Ava and Parker argue about his grandiose ideas of himself and her stalled career, respectively. In the heat of disagreement, Parker aims the remote for his latest project at Ava and she finds herself shrunken to the size of a Barbie. Parker is overjoyed at his (accidental) success as his goal was to isolate and shrink cancer cells to help his ailing mother. Ava is understandably freaked out and outraged. She calls Janelle to help her figure out a game plan while Parker congratulates himself and tries to decide who to tell first.

By the time Janelle arrives with tons of Barbie clothes in tow, Parker’s let his happy mistake go to his head, worrying Ava that she may face a future as a glorified lab rat. Seeing this, Janelle grabs her tiny friend and they escape to her apartment. Still without answers, Ava and Janelle stage and film a fake injury to buy Ava some time. She wonders if this is a sign that she should indeed leave the dance world. The next morning, they find that the whole shrinking ordeal was unfortunately not a dream and Parker and Dr. Lowell burst in insisting that they take Ava to a reclusive colleague who may be able to help. Ava reluctantly agrees against her better judgment.

When they arrive at the compound of DR. YELTIN (60s) he’s shocked, slightly jealous and a bit vindictive since Parker achieved what he was trying to do on purpose, accidentally. He insists that Ava stay so that he can run tests on her and when she objects, locks her in a tiny cage and orders his guards to detain her normal-sized friends. Suddenly the lights go out, there’s a commotion in the dark, and when they come back on, Ava is gone. Dr. Yeltin is outraged but after searching everyone, accepts that Ava has somehow escaped. He lets Dr. Lowell and Janelle go, but makes Parker stay to find Ava and help him figure out exactly how he managed to shrink her. Though he’s a federal employee, his longtime plan was always to take his discoveries back to Russia to use against the United States.

Ava finds herself under the lab, face to face with her tiny rescuer, Dr. Yeltin’s son NIKOLAI (early 3os). Forced to try out a shrinking mechanism years earlier before it was ready, Nikolai has been hiding for years in a makeshift apartment, using his engineering skills to try to undo his size conundrum. Ava is completely disheartened by her predicament and resigns to give up ballet forever, but Nikolai confesses that he gave up ballet to follow in his father’s footsteps and regrets it. He encourages her to use her tiny time to figure out exactly who she wants to be as a dancer while he figures out a way to unshrink them both.