I spend countless hours tinkering with inventions in the attic. There are pieces and parts of halfassed creations strewn all over our house. I've even got our son trying to invent things. Our neighbors hate the tinkering sounds, and Russ Thompson next door is threatening to murder little ol' me. Meanwhile, nobody at work takes me seriously, and you and I are having marital difficulties.
But don't worry, I've got it all under control! Oh, by the way, the kids are missing. Wait! Before you panic... I have glad tidings! I know where the kids are! They're in the backyard. OH, BUT WAIT. Uh, you know that shrinking machine I've been working on? It works. Do you see where I'm going with this...?
And so it began, a movie that chronicled zany events triggered by one of Wayne Szalinski's ambitious but admittedly harmful inventions.
I'm not sure anyone thought Honey, I Shrunk The Kids would do as well as it did. Grossing over $100 million in the late 80's... that was a big deal. I saw it in the theater, then again on TV. We taped it; I rewatched it. But until a week or so ago, I hadn't seen it in a long time. It's funny rewatching movies from my childhood and gaining a new appreciation for them. I certainly don't think this is a brilliant movie, but it does accomplish what it sets out to do: Shrink the children. Make everyone suffer. Bring everybody closer together.
This film begins by introducing us to the eight main characters. Each of them has some kind of problem, either with one of the other characters or with their own personality.
In the Szalinski family, we have...
Wayne, the dad, whose inventions are causing a strain on the entire family and whose noisy antics annoy his neighbors, the Thompsons.
Diane, the mom, who is frustrated with the lack of progress in Wayne's career and the general upheaval of the home.
Amy, the teenage daughter, whose head is in the clouds over boys and popularity.
Nick, the son, who wants to be an inventor like his dad but can't seem to get his dad to pay attention to him.
In the Thompson family, we have...
Big Russ, the dad, a tough guy who picks on his sons, especially the oldest.
Mae, the mom, who puts up with her husband but wishes he'd go easier on the kids.
Little Russ, the older teenage son, who wants his dad to love him even though he doesn't want to play football. (Because he thinks he's too small. Oh, the irony...) Little Russ has a crush on Amy, but Amy has never taken the time to notice him.
Ron, the younger teenage son, a kid with a major attitude problem who likes to say mean things about the Szalinskis.
So, when you're twenty minutes into the film -- even if you have only a general notion of what this movie's about -- you have a pretty strong notion that by the end of the film, everyone will be friends with everyone else, and they will have sorted out most, if not all, of their personal demons.
How is this achieved?
Through a good old-fashioned crisis, of course.
Crisis movies come in many forms. Whether a sorry bunch of souls is washed onto a desert island... or stuck in a van going across the country... or shrunk to miniscule proportions and tossed into the backyard, these types of adventures will bring out the worst, then the best, in the characters, and by the end everything will usually be super great. The pessimist in me wants to point out that these feelings of brotherhood and bliss brought on post-crisis will be fleeting at best, but I try to ignore those dark little thoughts.
I'm surprised I was able to enjoy Honey, I Shrunk The Kids when I recently viewed it, since its plotline is akin to one that I despise: the "one bad thing happens after another" kind of movie. Here's a shortlist of what happens to the four children in this movie:
-They shrink. (Well, duh.)
-They scream for help, but can't be heard. (Parents just don't listen!)
-Wayne takes a bat to his shrinking machine and sends scraps and shards raining on the kids. (You always hurt the ones you love.)
-Wayne sweeps up the mess -- kids included -- and puts them out with the trash. (Good riddance to bad rubbish... oh ho, not funny, I know.)
After escaping from the Hefty bag, the kids begin a long trek through the backyard to the house. During this time...
-Nick lands on a flower and is soon abducted by a crazed bee.
-Wayne, while looking for the kids, accidentally turns on the sprinkler, which sends gushes of water onto the lawn.
Amy nearly drowns. (Little Russ saves her with techniques learned in French class. What are they teaching in these schools?)
-The kids make friends with an ant, who later dies after a ferocious battle with a less friendly insect. (This part is pretty sad, actually. Way to go, movie. Make me cry.)
-A neighbor kid arrives to mow the lawn; the kids are almost sucked up and chopped into even tinier pieces.
-Big Russ, not knowing the kids are in the Szalinski's backyard, tosses a lit cigarette into the vicinity.
Mmmm, secondhand smoke!
-After hitching a ride on the family dog, Nick is flung into Wayne's bowl of Cheerios and nearly gets eaten.
But some cool things happen, too. The kids get to sleep in a giant Lego and feast on a humongous Little Debbie cookie. And slowly, they begin to change. Ron loses his snarky attitude. Amy and Nick become closer. Amy and Little Russ become very close (well, about as close as two people can get in a PG-movie.)
Heyyyy...
Meanwhile, as soon as Wayne discovers that the kids have been shrunk, he begins searching for them in the backyard. He pays more attention to them now than he had been paying them lately. Wayne and Diane are even working together to search for the kids. Awww...
And after the children are rescued and regrown, the Thompson parents and the Szalinski parents put aside their differences and become friends.
And they all lived happily ever afterrrr...
Oh, so there's more. Hey, instead of shrinking the children this time, why not make them rapidly grow to an enormous size? Uh... sure, but what would be the challenge?
"Honey, have you seen the kids?"
"Sure, they're the ten-story-tall creatures standing out on the street."
"Ohhh. Well, shrink them again already and let's move on with our lives!"
Nope. The only way to do it is to blow up a kid who's too young to know better than to use his newfound humongo-size to wreck havoc on the country.
But where can we find such a child?
Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Szalinski! It's a boy!!
When Honey, I Blew Up The Kid begins, three years have passed, and much has changed. The Szalinskis have moved to Nevada, and they now have a two-year-old son, Adam. Amy's about to go off to college, and Nick is trying to break out of his nerdy shell.
But one thing remains the same...
Wayne Szalinski is still a wacky inventor whose creations put children's lives in danger.
But his inventions aren't entirely to blame, here... Wayne is also scatterbrained and negligent, and he hardly helps the situations...
Case in point:
Wayne has sold his shrinking/regrowing machine concept to a company which he now works for. The newly-built machine won't function properly, and the company bigshots won't listen to Wayne's suggestions. So on the day Diane drives Amy to her new college, Wayne takes Nick and Adam to his lab in order to test the machine.
Wayne and Nick park Adam in his stroller off to the side and then proceed to neglect him. When they need an object to experiment on, they yoink Adam's toy bunny. Adam, a little Houdini in his own right (a fact which is established at the beginning of the film and that Wayne is well aware of), escapes from his stroller, tries to go after the bunny, and is hit with the laser. Wayne and Nick don't notice anything's amiss, and Adam innocently and stealthily climbs back into his stroller. Back at home, Adam begins to grow. Each time he comes in contact with a high voltage of electricity, he gets bigger.
At first, Wayne tries to sneak Adam back to the lab (dressing him in adult clothing from the Big & Tall store), but the lab guys know something's up, and Wayne is not allowed access this time. So Wayne brings Adam home and tries to keep him quiet and good. But he's two, so good luck with that plan, you incompetents. (It doesn't help that they feed him a dozen Fudgesicles.)
Before all this baby-growing stuff started, the Szalinskis had hired Keri Russell to babysit. So she shows up, sees the giant baby, faints, and then is later helpful to the cause when Adam escapes into the neighborhood. Nick appreciates Keri's
Before long, the guys at Wayne's company -- namely, the nefarious boss (above) -- realize what Wayne was doing in the lab that morning, and after seeing a surveillance photo of Adam and the bunny being zapped, they put two and two together. Of course, by now Adam's loose on the streets and is scaring the citizens, so his giganticness is hardly a secret.
Get me the President! Get him! On the PHONE!
One bad thing happens after another, and Adam continues to grow bigger. The guys from Wayne's lab are trying to tranquilize the kid with giant darts. Everyone in the Szalinski family thinks this is a terrible idea, but I don't see why. The kid is a danger to himself and others. He's destroying thousands of dollars' worth of property. Stick a dart in his tushie and let's move on! Geez.
Okay, I guess ONE reason not to subdue Adam is that he's now got Nick and Keri Russell hostage in the pocket of his giant overalls. If he falls down, well... goodbye, Nick and Keri, nice knowing ya...
Wayne and Diane have gotten ahold of Wayne's original shrinking machine and are trying to use it on Adam. But in order to shrink him, Adam has to -- they say -- hold still for a prolonged period of time. Why?? In the first movie, the shrinking took all of two seconds on all parties involved. But whatever, I didn't write this movie.
So how do you make a 2-year-old be still? First, Wayne tries singing Adam to sleep. But just as Adam is about to crash, Wayne utters the word "nap" and Adam throws a fit. He begins to toddle away.
Since the Szalinskis have moved to Nevada anyway, why not have Adam head toward Las Vegas? He hasn't done enough damage. Oooh, look at the pretty lights!
Finally, in a rare stroke of brilliance, Diane hatches a plan. Wayne should make her gigantic, and then she can hold Adam. Then he'll be still, and Wayne can shrink them both!
So she does, and he does, and everything is fine again except...
Nick and Keri Russell were still in Adam's pocket when he went back to normal size. And since they were normal- sized when the shrink-ray hit them, now they're tiny. And there's a hole in Adam's pocket! Oh no!!!
Whatever. They get found like five seconds later. And in the end, we are left with the hope that the Szalinskis will live happily ever after and that maybe, just maybe, Wayne will destroy that infernal contraption once and for all.
Nope.
Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves went straight to video in 1997. Though made only five years after the previous installment, eight or nine years have passed in the Szalinskis' universe, and the once-terrible tot Adam is now a dorky preteen.
The Szalinskis appear to have moved yet again, and their new house is located not far from the home of Wayne's brother, Gordon. Gordon and his wife Patti have two children: a daughter, Jenny, who is about 13, and a son, Mitch, who is Adam's age.
Diane and Patti are going to some sort of resort/spa for the weekend, and plan to leave the three kids at Wayne and Diane's house, to be cared for by the dads. (Hmm. It seems every time disaster strikes this family, it's when Diane has not been home. Interesting...) Diane tells Wayne that before she returns, she wants him to get rid of this giant tiki statue that has been sitting in their entryway.
The moms set off on their trip, but have to return almost immediately because they forgot to drop off Mitch's medication. Meanwhile, the dads have sent the kids to the store and have hauled the tiki statue upstairs, where Wayne uses his old shrinking device to make the statue small enough to hide from Diane. As the men are examining the tiny tiki, the shrinking machine accidentally goes off, and the men are reduced. Then the moms come back and see the statue is no longer in the entryway. They hear noises coming from the attic and go to investigate. The machine zaps them too.
The four parents, upon realizing the trouble they're in, climb up to the attic window and peer out just in time to see Patti's car rolling down the driveway and toward the driveway across the street. There was something wrong with the parking break. Goodbye, car. Goodbye all evidence of the moms being home.
So the kids come home and can't find the dads (there's a message from Wayne on the answering machine that got cut off when Diane answered it earlier, which -- in its truncated form -- indicates that Wayne and Gordon are taking off for the night.) Incredulous, the kids begin to relish their newfound parentless freedom. Jenny begins calling her friends and organizing a little party.
The parents need to grab the attention of the kids, so they begin traveling from the attic down to the main floor. They hitch a ride on a fishing line, which takes them to Adam's bedroom window. From there, they climb into a Hot Wheels car and zip along a track for one wild ride.
The end of the track flings them down the laundry chute. Later, after narrowly escaping from the clutches of a cockroach, they jump through the hoops of an electric bubblemaker to float into the living room, where Wayne plans to rewire the stereo to amplify Gordon's voice for the partying kids to hear.
The moms head for the kitchen to find Mitch's medicine -- the boy is beginning to show signs of weakness from his potassium deficiency. While there, Diane makes friends with a Daddy Long Legs and the women use his (her?) web to climb onto the counter, but they're still unable to grab the kids' attention. If Mitch doesn't get his medicine, he may die. Or something.
Meanwhile, Jenny's fairly tame party has gotten wilder since three boys showed up at the door. One of the boys tries to make out with Jenny, who wants none of that. She tells him off, and the boys begin to trash the house. Not a moment too soon, Wayne fixes the stereo so that Gordon can yell at the kids and scare the crap out of everyone but his kids (who recognize his voice).
Jenny, Adam, and Mitch realize their parents are tiny, and after learning that the adults were in the house that entire time, they're quite embarrassed about how unruly they've acted. But the parents are proud of the kids for the things they've accomplished -- feeding Mitch bananas when they couldn't find his potassium medicine... Jenny telling the overzealous teenage boy to get lost... Thanks to this crisis, the parents now trust the children. (Weird, cuz I wouldn't.)
The kids follow Wayne's instructions and use the machine to put the parents back to their rightful size. Everyone is so glad to be back to normal that there is love all around. Diane tells Wayne he can keep the tiki statue if he wants.
And so he does. But not before making a little modification...
All things considered, I think the franchise could have done without the second and third movies. Honey, I Blew Up The Kid is pretty obnoxious. Adam is such a brat... I kept hoping he'd get tranquilized with a giant dart courtesy of John Shea... and Nick with a lovelife? I can't decide whether I should be bored or revolted. (Okay, I have to admit the actor got kind of cute.) But still, Nick's little romance is only one of a few things that came out of that entire adventure. At least in the first movie, there were eight characters whose problems got solved thanks to the crisis. Here, Nick gets a girlfriend and Wayne's boss gets fired. And maybe those are both good things, but don't forget that Adam has destroyed half of Las Vegas and now social services is probably going to come after the family.
As for Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, the only returning castmember was Rick Moranis as Wayne Szalinski, as everyone else -- including his wife and son Adam -- had been recast. And do we care that Wayne's niece, who has never been seen or mentioned before this film, is now able to be trusted by her mom? Or that Adam now appreciates science and thinks his dad might be kind of cool? Also, the boys showing up at the party and acting tough is supposed to be suspenseful, but it doesn't work. Oooh, boys came over. So scary. Ten years ago, Nick and Amy almost got sucked up by a lawn mower and nearly drowned in the backyard. Now that's tension. Who cares if Mom and Dad almost get eaten by a roach when they're tiny? It's a Kids' movie, and I'll be darned if I care what happens to the parents.
First film? Good. Second film? Annoying. Third film? Watchable, but unnecessary. I doubt there will be a fourth, since there was a Honey, I Shrunk The Kids TV show in the late 90's that probably exhausted every other possible plotline. But I wouldn't put it past them. Home Alone 4 proved to me that such evil does exist...
4/23/2007
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