<center>Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
Originally released - 23 June 1989
Director: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002653/">Joe Johnston</a>
Main Cast
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001548/">Rick Moranis</a>: Wayne Szalinski
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001242/">Matt Frewer</a>: Russell Thompson
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0833519/">Marcia Strassman</a>: Diane Szalinski
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0840133/">Kristine Sutherland</a>: Mae Thompson
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0114787/">Thomas Wilson Brown</a>: Russ Thompson
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0750758/">Jared Rushton</a>: Ron Thompson
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0642091/">Amy O'Neill</a>: Amy Szalinski
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0647084/">Robert Oliveri</a>: Nick Szalinski
Domestic Box Office Gross - $130,724,172 ($216,666,259 adjusted)
Worldwide Box Office Gross - $222,724,172 ($369,149,887 adjusted)</center>
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was Disney's biggest hit of the 1980s, typical family film with a comic twist. An inventor father concentrates on his work, making the rest of his family feeling somewhat second rate to his work. He tries to create a machine that will shrink objects, only he struggles to get it to work effectively. Next door, likewise lives a family who are also less than perfect. When a wayward baseball gets hit through the attic window, it knocks the machine into action, and with the baseball blocking the laser, the machine begins to work properly and when the kids go up to retrieve the ball, the machine shrinks them smaller than ants. When the father comes home, disillusioned by the failure of his machine he smashes it into pieces, then sweeps up the mess he has made on the floor (along with the kids) and dumps them at the end of the garden. The kids now face the prospect of making the trip across the garden where, the blades of grass tower above them.
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I always use to love seeing this film when I was little, however my enthusiasm for it seems to have dwindled.
I remember as a kid watching in awe at the giant world or plants and insects the children had to pass through in order to reach home, it always seemed like some giant epic which I would relish. And what a world! The giant sets look simply amazing, the effects (which today would almost certainly be done with CGI) look amazing and barely dated at all. Granted there's the odd bit of stop motion which looks a bit shaky, and the odd transition shot from the giant world, to the miniature world that appears a bit off through these older eyes, but it still is impressive stuff.
Another point which always niggles me now with these older eyes, is the fact that we end up with a happy family. At the beginning of the film, the work-mad Dad doesn't have much time for his children, their marriage is in stormy water, and the set up almost leads you to believe it is the father that will go on a journey to understand how important his family is. Instead the kids are the main focus, and it just doesn't seem to fit that because they were shrunk and had to cross the jungle that is their lawn, that all of a sudden everything becomes happy and rosy. Yes their is the arguement that he realised how much he missed them when they were missing, but it doesn't seem enough to me for the families problems to get brushed under the carpet at the end of the film.
Also watching this with an older brain, it irritates me how Wayne jumps to the conclusion that he must've shrunk the kids and that they are currently crossing the lawn. Yes he spots the tiny couch and realises his machine is actually capable of shrinking things, but it's a big jump from that to him working out that somewhere in the garden they're crawling through the grass.
These issues aside, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids still sticks out as one of the high points of the live action Eisner era. It is amongst the few live action 80s films (not just Disney) that even today is still in the public conscience and remains popular, which is all the more puzzling why Disney hasn't given it much of a 'hurrah!' DVD-wise.
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Next week - 'Greyfriars Bobby'
Previous Live Action Discussions
<a href="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/forum/vie ... ">Treasure Island</a>
<a href="http://www.ultimatedisney.com/forum/vie ... 0">Tron</a>
Of course, it all started with this movie, which was a magical thing as a kid not only because of the amazing effects and fun story, but also because it was from that time when Disney was beginning its "Renaissance" period. The Little Mermaid proved they could be a formidable force in animation again, and then came Honey to prove they could do the same for live-action family films. 
