HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Some beautiful sets and some quality
stop-motion animation make this film more of a pleasure than
it had a right to be. When it tells an adventure story, it
is quite good. When it tries to be goofball, it tries too
hard. Rating: high +1.
Of course, one of the staples of the fantasy film has always been monsters. Big creatures lumbering around have a certain fascination. And one variant on the monster concept is to shrink the main character so it is the whole world that is monstrous. DEVIL DOLL was probably not the first film about shrinking humans, but it is the earliest so well-known. For the most part, it did not show us the world from the small human's point of view. It was, however, followed by more notable films which used the horror of being small: DR. CYCLOPS, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE, the television show "World of Giants" (not to be confused with "Land of the Giants," which was more in the Gulliver tradition than really being about shrunken people), FANTASTIC VOYAGE (which introduced micro-miniaturization), THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN, INNERSPACE, and this year's entry, HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS.
Like THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN and INNERSPACE, HONEY is basically a comedy, though perhaps better because it was not so ambitious. Rick Moranis plays Wayne Szalinski, who works in a research lab in his attic for a major corporation. He is working on making a laser beam squeeze most of the space out of atoms so that matter shrinks down. Through carelessness and accident the beam is accidentally turned on his two children and the two children of his neighbor Russ Thompson (played by Matt Frewer, formerly Max Headroom). They are swept up with the trash and put down on the far end of the backyard. From there the story proceeds on two levels: what is happening in the parents' world and the adventures of the four victims as they try to return home. Director Joe Johnston's story is much better told and ironically is even more believable when it is about the miniaturization victims. On one hand you have a slapstick goofball comedy of the parents looking for their children; on the other, you have a nice little adventure film of four people trying to survive and make their way through the grass jungle of a backyard.
What is particularly nice about the film is the detail of the giant backyard. The scale is roughly 1:240 and by gosh, everything seems very accurate to that scale. Stop-motion insects were animated by a team including David Allen, a disciple of Ray Harryhausen, and they look very good. A great deal of attention to detail was used in the big sets. What is needed to do the sets correctly is a great deal of craft labor, so filming in Mexico City's Churubusco Studios were labor is plentiful was a very intelligent decision. The sets are surprisingly moody and artistically done. In some scenes the presence of water betrayed the actual size of the sets, but generally this film's miniature world seemed as believable or more so than in just about any other miniaturization film. As a result, HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS is much better than it seems it has a right to be. I would give it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
I suppose something should be said about "Tummy Trouble," the Roger Rabbit cartoon accompanying HONEY. The most common complaint I hear is that it may well frighten children. Perhaps, and perhaps not. The simple fact is that the cartoon is not very well constructed. One thing rarely noted about a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but nonetheless true, is that it tells its story well. Even if the story is just a rack on which to hang jokes, it should be a well-constructed rack. "Tummy Trouble" is kind of a cheesy cartoon with a lot of forced humor and a basic story that does not make a lot of sense. Bugs had a well-defined, likeable character; Roger is basically just obnoxious. Sure, people laughed at it, but it is a lower form of humor than the classic Warner Brothers' cartoons, just as the Three Stooges were funny but not of the quality of Laurel and Hardy.
Mark R. Leeper
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