Review: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (DMC #84)
We’re back from our summer break with the next film in our challenge: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! It marks the 84th film in our Disnerd Movie Challenge. If you still remember the plot, skip our synopsis and jump ahead to our review.
Synopsis
Our story begins on Saturday morning in the Szalinski house where siblings Amy and Nick are starting their day in a house full of gadgets made by their inventor father, Wayne. Wayne and his wife, Diane, had a fight the night before, so Diane spent the night elsewhere. While Amy chats on the phone about the upcoming school dance and Nick works on his own invention, Wayne tinkers in the attic on a shrink ray which so far has failed to successfully shrink anything. At the house next door, the Thompson family prepares for a fishing trip, with Big Russ Thompson complaining to his wife, Mae, about the noise coming from the Szalinskis’ house. Before Wayne leaves for his conference, Diane calls to wish him luck and to say that she’ll be back home later that day. Wayne instructs the kids to get the house back in order while he’s away and heads for the conference to share his progress on his shrink ray with the scientific community. Nick convinces one of the neighborhood kids, Tommy, to mow the lawn for him later, enticing him with a chance to use the family’s remote-controlled lawn mower. Amy gets to work cleaning the kitchen, dancing while she does it. The older Thompson boy, Little Russ, watches her through the window, enamored. When Little Russ’s brother, Ron, accidentally hits a baseball into the Szalinskis’ attic window, Little Russ uses it as an excuse to go over to the Szalinski house and introduce himself to Amy. Unbeknownst to the kids, however, the stray baseball struck Wayne’s shrink ray and tampered with the machine’s settings. When Nick and Ron go up to the attic to inspect the damage and find the baseball, the boys are shrunk by the shrink ray. When Amy and Little Russ go up to the attic to check on their brothers, they end up shrunk, too, along with their dad’s thinking couch.
When Wayne returns home, he follows the family’s dog, Quark, up to the attic, but he can’t see the kids because they’re too small. All he notices is that his couch is missing. Frustrated by his failure at the conference, Wayne destroys his shrink ray. He grabs a broom to sweep up the debris and ends up sweeping the kids into a trash bag which he deposits on the edge of the backyard. The kids manage to escape the garbage bag into the Szalinskis’ backyard, but now that they’re smaller than an ant, they face a daunting trek through the dense grass of the lawn to reach the house and alert Wayne. When Diane returns home, Wayne tells her about the missing couch and not finding the kids anywhere. The parents start calling their kids’ friends to find out where they are and come to find that the Thompsons can’t find their kids, either. Meanwhile, back in the yard, the kids try whistling for Quark for help. The boys decide to climb a flower to get a better view while Amy stays on the ground. Nick, who’s allergic to pollen, falls into another flower just before a swarm of bees come for the flowers. Nick and Little Russ hitch a ride on one of the bees, but the bee crash lands in another part of the lawn far away from Amy and Ron. Back in the house, Diane decides to go to the mall to look for the kids while Wayne stays home in case they return. Wayne soon discovers his shrunken thinking couch and realizes that if his couch shrunk, the kids might have shrunk, too! He begins to search the attic floor for them, but then realizes he swept the floor. He inspects the trash bag out in the yard and sees the rip in the bag where the kids managed to escape. He tries not to step on the lawn as he searches for them. On another part of the lawn, Little Russ wakes Nick from unconsciousness and the two start looking for Amy and Ron. Meanwhile, Ron is getting on Amy’s nerves as the two search for Nick and Little Russ. Ron only stops pestering her once she points out that the shrink ray works, which means her family is going to be rich. Wayne, meanwhile, is searching the lawn on stilts when he accidentally turns on the backyard sprinklers. The kids dodge the sprinklers’ giant droplets as the water quickly floods the lawn. At ground level, Amy falls into a giant puddle of water and nearly drowns, but Little Russ rescues her just as Wayne shuts off the sprinklers. Little Russ gives Amy CPR and revives her.
Wayne returns to searching the lawn, this time using an apparatus so he can lay in a sling suspended over the grass instead of stepping on it. Next door, the Forresters arrive to pick up the Thompsons for the fishing trip. Big Russ reluctantly lies to the Forresters saying Mae isn’t feeling well and they won’t be able to join the Forresters on the fishing trip after all. Back on the lawn, the kids find a giant cream-filled cookie and hungrily dig into it, but an ant has found it, too. Nick gets an idea: they should ride the ant to the house. Amy decides they should tame the ant by using a cookie crumb. The kids rig a stick with the cookie crumb on the end of it and create a sled for the ant to carry them behind it. When Diane returns home, she calls the cops to report her kids as missing, not knowing that the cops are already at the Thompsons’ house next door about their missing kids. When Diane hangs up, Wayne tells Diane he shrunk the kids. When the cops arrive at the Szalniskis’ house, Wayne tells the cops it was a mistake and that their kids aren’t missing after all. As the sun goes down, the kids decide to stop for the night and let the ant go home, but the ant has grown attached and it takes a while for them to convince the ant to leave them before they crawl into a LEGO piece to sleep. Diane and Wayne finally tell the Thompsons that they think their kids were shrunk. Just as Little Russ and Amy are sharing a romantic moment, a scorpion attacks the kids’ LEGO camp. The kids’ ant friend hears Ron’s cries for help and fights off the scorpion. The kids rush to the ant’s aid, but the scorpion stings the ant, poisoning it. Though the kids scare off the scorpion, the ant dies, and the kids mourn its passing.
The next morning, Diane finds Wayne asleep in the attic after staying up all night to fix the shrink ray. Out in the yard, Tommy shows up to use the remote-controlled lawn mower. The kids wake up and hear the lawn mower approaching. They make a run for it and hide in an earthworm hole, but the lawn mower stops over the earthworm hole and nearly sucks the kids into the mower. Diane and Wayne, having heard the mower, rush out and make Tommy turn off the mower just in time. The kids are thrown back onto the lawn with the cut grass. When Wayne and Diane go back inside, Quark finds the kids. The kids grab onto his fur and hitch a ride back into the house, but Nick falls into Wayne’s cereal bowl. Quark barks at Wayne and stops him before he eats Nick. Wayne finally sees the shrunken kids. The Thompsons are brought over and the kids explain how the baseball tampered with the shrink ray. Wayne is able to use that information to put the final fix on the shrink ray. Before letting Wayne use the device on their shrunken kids, Big Russ insists he test the machine on him. After proving that the shrink ray can successfully shrink and enlarge Big Russ, Wayne uses the shrink ray on the kids and returns them to their normal size. Later, both families have dinner together with a giant-sized turkey, courtesy of the shrink ray, and a giant-sized dog treat for Quark.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: I know I’ve seen Honey, I Shrunk the Kids at least once before, but I have more memories of Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves because of the trailer for that movie that would play ahead of one of the other Disney movies on VHS. I honestly can’t even remember if I liked Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I guess we’ll see how it does this time around.
Kevin: I haven’t seen this since I was a kid, but I watched it enough times to remember the general story. I never would have guessed it came out the year I was born, if only because I distinctly remember seeing commercials for the movie; guess it was for a home video release or something. I’ve actually seen the sequel Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves more than this one (and I remember the sequel being a lot funnier). I’m positive the original movie has its humor, but I’m skeptical going into this because most of the sci-fi/comedy films we’ve watched so far in this challenge haven’t been all that great. But this film has Rick Moranis, a certified comedian unlike the Fred MacMurray and Dean Jones characters of the past. so there is hope! Honestly, though, I recall this being a fun family adventure, so I imagine it will still hold up.
Thoughts After Watching
The forced perspective still looks great!
Kevin: Before hitting play, I was a bit concerned that some of the practical effects weren’t going to hold up as well as they once might have. Although there are certainly examples of older films whose effects still work in the modern age, I generally go in with few expectations about that part of movies. I was very pleased to see that my concerns were unneeded, since the effects hold up well! There are exceptions to be made with most of the stop-motion/prop elements such as the honey bee, the ant, and the scorpion, as well as the noticeable blurry outline surrounding characters in some shots that clearly indicates some blue or green screen. Those things are very small and are expected just given the time this was made. What I was much more interested in were the practical effects and the forced perspective. Each scene the kids are in from the moment they are shrunk looks incredibly real. One of the first shots is the kids picking up Wayne’s thinking couch and trying to carry it across the floor, where the once very small cracks in the floorboards are now so large they have to leap over them. Later, when the kids are accidentally taken outside and have to traverse the yard to get home, the sheer scale of the jungle-like atmosphere they find themselves in is totally believable. Even though it’s clear the tall blades of grass are giant props, they never look out of place. I was also impressed with the action sequences. In order to sell the idea that the actors were really that small, things that would look completely regular to normal-sized humans suddenly become treacherous for the Szalinskis and Thompsons—the sprinklers going off to water the grass, turning the very ground into a dangerous mudhole that Amy nearly drowns in; or mowing the lawn becoming a struggle to save Nick as he is almost sucked up into the blades. The sequence with Nick riding the bumblebee is also a stand out moment. I think some camera tricks similar to what we’ve seen in Darby O’Gill and the Little People must have also been used. The filmmakers deserve a round of applause for a job well done on the effects.
The humor holds up
Megan: Of all the mad scientist comedies we’ve seen in our challenge so far, this one is the funniest one yet. As Kevin pointed out, that probably has a lot to do with the actors in this film having real comedy experience. My favorite joke in the entire movie is when Little Russ uses CPR to rescue Amy and tells Nick he learned how to do it in “French class.” The callback to the joke when Nick finally understands the joke at the end of the movie is great!
Kevin: I actually completely forgot about that joke until we watched this! I don’t remember if I understood it when I was a kid, but this is definitely one of those jokes you can appreciate when you get older. There are some other great humorous moments, usually involving Wayne himself. I laughed so hard when he strapped himself to that contraption in his backyard looking for the kids, only for Diane to join him once she realized what he was up to. Seriously, Rick Moranis’s comedic timing far surpasses anything we saw from previous movies in this genre. Apparently, he was quoted as calling himself the “Fred MacMurray of the ‘90s.” Personally, I think that’s underselling himself. It’s nothing against MacMurray, but as I said, Moranis built an entire career out of comedic roles. Funnily enough, apparently the director originally wanted MacMurray to be in the movie. I’m honestly glad that wasn’t the case. Overall, the film was filled with so many funny scenes, and interestingly, they didn’t even clash with some of the darker and more frightening moments.
A mixed bag for the female characters
Megan: I was hoping that a 1989 film might have performed a bit better, but alas, like so many films before it, it fails the Bechdel test. Though we do see some conversations between named female characters, the conversations center around the missing kids—three boys and a girl collectively. There is no conversation between two female characters that isn’t about a male character in some way. To this film’s credit, though, we do get some slightly better female representation in this film. For instance, I was pleasantly surprised to see both a female cop and a male cop come to investigate the kids’ disappearance. Even more surprising? The female cop did most of the interrogating while her male partner barely said a word. (Usually it’s the other way around.) We also got to see a working mom in action—Diane is a real estate agent trying to finalize selling a house while also trying to find out what happened to her kids.
Yet even with these steps in the right direction, the film still includes some sexist moments. Starting at the beginning of the film, Wayne tells Nick and Amy that they’re to clean the house while he’s away at the conference so that things look presentable when Diane gets back. How does Wayne divvy up those chores? Nick gets one task: mow the lawn…with a remote-controlled lawn mower…a chore which Nick quickly pawns off to another boy from the neighborhood. Amy gets a look from her father and a quick “good luck,” implying that it is her job to clean the entirety of the rest of the house. Though Amy makes the most of it and dances while she cleans, she actually does the work of cleaning while Nick doesn’t lift a finger. (I’m having flashbacks to Cinderella and Snow White here.)
Things aren’t much better at the Thompsons where Little Russ spies on Amy and Big Russ, seeing the younger Russ’s crush, tries to convince the boy to work out more (implying that the only way to get a girl is to “be a man” and lift heavy weights). Toxic masculinity much? Then of course there’s Big Russ lying to his wife about smoking and later embarrassing her by lying to the Forresters that it’s Mae’s “plumbing” that requires the Thompsons to cancel their trip—not that their kids are missing. Ron seems to have internalized a lot of his dad’s thinking about women because throughout the film he’s constantly making snide remarks about Amy and girls/women in general. He says things like “You let a girl tell you what to do?” and “Your sister’s not bad. For a girl.”
Then, of course, there’s the usual damsel-in-distress trope where Amy needs a rescue from her male counterpart. While Nick also gets into trouble, his predicament with the flower and the bee is more comedic in nature. Sure, he gets knocked out by the rough landing, but he’s easily shaken awake and moves on. Amy, on the other hand, very nearly dies and is only revived because of Russ. Would it have been any better if Amy and Nick’s predicaments were reversed? Maybe a tiny bit, but it still would have left her as a damsel in distress. I’d much prefer to see the girl saving one of the boys for a change.
Sexism aside, the story is compelling
Megan: Unlike many of the Disney films from the ‘70s, this film at least has a solid and compelling story to it. The plot is well structured, giving us just the right amount of Fun and Games moments with a solid All Is Lost beat (who would have thought a film could make us grieve for an ant like that?). The romantic storyline between Amy and Little Russ is predictable and ultimately not necessary to the story, but still fun. And unlike the other mad scientist films in our challenge, it seems like a little more time was spent developing this cast of characters to give them unique wants/goals throughout the story. It’s not Academy Award level writing, but it’s a fun and funny film that I wouldn’t mind watching again.
Kevin: One of the best things about this movie is the friendship that forms between the Szalinskis and Thompsons. It’s nothing groundbreaking or new, but there’s something endearing about a simple premise like taking a couple of families that don’t get along and having them come together through shared experiences and challenges. In particular, I liked that Russ Sr. was able to let go of his expectations of his sons and accept them as they wanted to be. Previous sci-fi comedies didn’t really seem to focus much on their characters and give them much development. It’s nice to see a film that managed to give us dynamic characters for once.
