Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

A charming and amiable Disney live-action feature, directed by newcomer Joe Johnston, about an inventor (Rick Moranis) who devises a gizmo that accidentally shrinks his two kids and their two friends (Amy O’Neill, Robert Oliveri, Jared Rushton, and Thomas Brown) to about a quarter of an inch high. While the plot abounds in improbabilities and even a few absurdities, and the special effects are uneven, the poetics of the basic idea really pay off: a suburban backyard is transformed into an endless jungle packed with adventures (including rides on a bumblebee and a friendly baby ant, and menacing attacks from a hose and a lawn mower). Written by Ed Naha and Tom Schulman, and based on a story by Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, and Naha; the setting and at least one character–the neighbor kids’ father (Matt Frewer, best known as TV’s Max Headroom)–recall Joe Dante’s The ‘Burbs. On the same program is Tummy Trouble, a Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman cartoon directed by Rob Minkoff, with a live-action coda directed by Frank Marshall; the short isn’t quite as brilliant as Somethin’s Cookin’ (which opened Who Framed Roger Rabbit), but it’s full of extravagant Tex Avery-like action and reaction; Richard Williams unfortunately didn’t supervise the animation of this short, although some of his animators worked on it. (Webster Place, Hillside Mall, Old Orchard, Norridge, Ford City East, Harlem-Cermak, Deerbrook)

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