Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)

Taglines: The most astonishing, innovative, backyard adventure of all time!

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie synopsis. Eccentric scientist and inventor Wayne Szalinski lives in his suburban home attempting to perfect a ray gun capable of shrinking objects, but the apples he uses as test objects instead blow up. After an argument between Wayne and his wife Diane, she spent the night with her mother and is currently at work, worrying her teenaged daughter Amy, and their son Nick, who has inherited his father’s inventive ingenuity and intelligence.

Next door neighbors, the Thompsons, are getting ready for a fishing trip, but Russ’ oldest son Little Russ is less than enthusiastic, as he and his father’s interests often clash, resulting in his feeling belittled, and he is more interested in meeting Amy than spending the weekend camping. Younger son Ron, however, is enthusiastic, though his relationship with Russ Sr. is strained when he inadvertently sets off a booby trap in the yard.

Wayne instructs Amy and Nick to clean the house in preparation for Diane’s return home before leaving for his conference. Nick is assigned to do the lawn, but he makes a deal to let his friend Tommy Pervis mow the lawn with the remote-controlled mower, but he (Tommy) has to leave and promises to do it later. Ron accidentally hits his baseball through the Szalinskis’ attic window, which inadvertently activates the machine and blocks its targeting laser.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)

Caught by little Russ, he is made to apologize to Nick and Amy, and Amy has her brother take Ron to retrieve his ball; the two encounter the machine and are hit by its beam, thus shrinking them. At his conference, Wayne is laughed at for failing to provide proof of his shrink ray and leaves in frustration, while at the house Amy and Russ go to check on their siblings and are shrunk by the ray. When Wayne returns home, they try to get his attention, but their voices are too small and he is unable to hear them.

Frustrated by his day and the broken window he discovers, Wayne takes it out on the machine, damaging it and nearly crushing the children with the shrapnel of parts. He then sweeps the debris (and the children) into a dust pan and takes them out in a trash bag. They escape and enter the uncut yard’s wilderness where Nick calculates over 3.2 miles at their size to get back to the house and they start walking.

Meanwhile, Diane returns home and she and Wayne make up, but they soon grow concerned about Nick and Amy. While trying to summon their dog Quark, Nick falls into a flower and is picked up by a bee, and Russ jumps on it to help him. The bee flies around the backyard with the two stuck to its hair; as it attacks Wayne, he knocks it out of the air with a baseball bat, causing the bee to crash land.

Wayne realizes that a baseball was what caused the window to break in the attic since Nick doesn’t play sports. Once in the attic, he finds his shrunken couch and realizes what happened to the kids; afraid to step on the lawn he arranges a sling to hover over the grass and search for the children. Next door, Russ and Mae are forced to call off their trip because their boys haven’t returned yet and they call the police to report them missing.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a 1989 American science fiction family film. The directorial debut of Joe Johnston and produced by Walt Disney Pictures, it tells the story of an inventor who accidentally shrinks his and his neighbor’s kids to a quarter of an inch with his electromagnetic shrinking machine and throws them out into the backyard with the trash, where they must venture into their backyard to return home while fending off insects and other obstacles.

Rick Moranis stars as Wayne Szalinski, the inventor who accidentally shrinks his children, Amy (Amy O’Neill) and Nick (Robert Oliveri). Marcia Strassman portrays his wife, Diane, to whom he delivers the titular line. Matt Frewer, Kristine Sutherland, Thomas Wilson Brown, and Jared Rushton star as Russ, Mae, Russ Jr., and Ron Thompson, the Szalinskis’ next-door neighbors.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Movie Poster (1989)

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)

Directed by: Joe Johnston
Starring: Rick Moranis, Matt Frewer, Marcia Strassman, Kristine Sutherland, Thomas Wilson Brown, Jared Rushton, Amy O’Neill, Robert Oliveri, Kimmy Robertson
Screenplay by: Ed Naha, Tom Schulman
Production Design by: Gregg Fonseca
Cinematography by: Hiro Narita
Film Editing by: Michael A. Stevenson
Costume Design by: Carol Brolaski
Set Decoration by: Macedonio Ramos
Art Direction by: Dorree Cooper, John Iacovelli
Music by: James Horner
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: June 23, 1989

Visits: 179