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| Rick Moranis in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) |
What you least expected from this column would be a retrospective on a Disney live-action family comedy trilogy, yet here we are!
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Honey, I Shurunk... (1989)
Honey,
I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
Moronic inventor
and failed scientist Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) makes a machine that would
shrink objects and then bring them back to their regular or bigger size; if
anything such a devise could possibly change the world, but what it changes
instead is his family’s life when the kids become so small he cannot see them,
and their adventure begins in the front yard.
Taking its cue
from the masterful The Incredible
Shrinking Man (1957), this family comedy from director Joe Johnson [still a
hot shot in Hollywood as he recently helmed Captain
America: The First Avenger (2011)], really benefits mostly from the story
by our favourites Stuart Gordon [Re-Animator
(1985)], Brian Yuzna [The Dentist
(1996)], and Ed Naha (who wrote the screenplay, with Tom Schulman), and of
course its stunning special effects (the team behind them received a BAFTA
Award), resulting in a box-office that nobody saw coming, grossing $222.7
million to become Disney’s biggest live-action hit at that time, not to mention
a staple on the VHS market.
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Honey, I Blew Up the... (1992)
Honey,
I Blew Up the Kid (1992)
The moronic
inventor Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) has science gone wrong again, and this
time he grows his son (Robert Oliveri, returning from the original film) to
great proportions.
Based on the
characters by Ed Naha, Stuart Gordon, and Brian Yuzna, this time the story was
written by Gary Goodrow (an actor by trade), who also penned the screenplay
with Thom Eberhardt [Night of the Comet
(1984)] and Peter Elbling (another actor by trade), taking its cue from another
1950s size-centric sci-fi cheapy, namely Attack
of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), only to sadly remind us how much more
attractive these oldies are. The special effects and production values are
top-notch for the time this was made (and you couldn’t expect anything less
with a $32 million budget), and overall it has this air of old Hollywood about
it, yet there is no soul to it and it can be dismissed easily. It grossed $96
million, which was a success, but nowhere the splash the original had made at
the box-office. Also, several films with a much lower budget went on to make
much more entertaining versions of the theme, including Fred Olen Ray’s Attack of the 60 Foot Centrefolds (1995)
and Christopher Guest’s TV movie Attack
of the 50 Ft. Woman (1993).
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Honey, We Shrunk... (1997)
Honey,
We Shrunk Ourselves (1997)
While trying to
make a tiki statute smaller, the awkward moronic inventor Wayne Szalinski (Rick
Moranis) shrinks himself and his brother [Stuart Pankin from Arachnophobia (1990)] and their wives
[Eve Gordon, later in The Grudge 2
(2006), and Robin Bartlett, later in Shutter
Island (2010)]; starting a household quest to notify their kids, who in the
meanwhile have a pyjama party.
Directed by Dean
Cundey (an acclaimed cinematographer by trade), this is surprisingly good for a
straight-to-video movie (it was the first live-action film released by Disney
with this – new then – approach to distribution), and even the special effects
are not second rate, as they successfully channel the monster movies of the
yesteryear, with sequences that include cockroaches and spiders. And also, at a
mere 74 minutes long, it never outstays its welcome as a comedy/adventure for
the entire family.
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