FUNNY TO SHRINK THE KIDS

HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS (1989)
dir: Joe Johnston

MAD # 292, January 1990
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) is a scientist that has invented a ray to shrink objects that he can't seem to get to work. His son Nick (Robert Oliveri) is an inspiring inventor himself. Next door is his jock neighbor Russ Thompson (Matt Frewer), who wishes his son Ron (Jared Rushton) would follow in his footsteps. His brother Little Russ (Thomas Wilson Brown) is practicing baseball and he breaks the Szalinski's attic window and the ball lands on the ray up there, shrinking the some of the objects. Ron makes Little Russ go and apologize to the Szalinzkis, which he also sees as an excuse to talk to their teenage daughter Amy (Amy O'Neill). All four kids go upstairs to retrieve the ball and the ray, which has now gone haywire from being hit by the baseball, and shrinks them.

It also shrinks Wayne's couch, a plot device later used. Their dog Quark is later used as well, and like most MAD spoofs thinks here. Wayne had pitched his machine to a group of scientists earlier, and has now come home frustrated that it didn't go over, writing it off as a failure and smashing it. After his tantrum, he sweeps up the mess he's made and throws it in the garbage, not seeing the shrunken kids. After taking the trash out, the kids escape the bag and find themselves on the lawn. The Thompsons next door are getting ready for a fishing trip.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids got a lot of its audience by having a cartoon before the feature, something that hadn't been done for a long time.

There's a long adventure (the Cracked parody gets more into it) on their lawn that involves all of them in large blades of grass, drops of dew that are rivers, sprinklers are huge storms, and the like. They fight an ant over an Oreo they find and end up taming and befriending the ant. Tinkerbell and the Mad Hatter are not in the movie, just also properties of Disney. Russ sneaks a cigarette in the backyard and throws the butt onto the neighboring lawn, which the kids use for fire at night. At home Wayne Finds the missing couch and discovers the ray actually does work and has shrunken the kids.

Lily Tomlin complains this movie is derivative of The Incredible Shrinking Woman, though her movie is taken from several different movies as well.

Wayne's wife Diane (Marcia Strassman) comes home and he has to break the news about the missing children to her. They both look for the kids by hovering over the lawn suspended from a clothesline so they don't step on them, searching for them with magnifying glasses. Quark hears them and rescues them, bringing them the rest of the way back and into the house. Wayne finds them in his Cheerios and brings them upstairs to bring them back to normal size. Russ Thompson volunteers to have the ray tested on himself before using it on them. Here they make a reference to the actor having been Max Headroom.

This was the cover for the German edition of MAD.

From If Famous Movies Were Made Into Comic Strips by Russ Cooper, in MAD #295, June 1990

HONEY, I STUNK THE KIDS
Cracked #251, January 1990
w: Charles E. Hall
a: Walter Brogan

The movie ended with the two families getting and having a giant turkey. Here it's a California Raisin.

Here is the cartoon that proceeded it. Although what annoys me about the Roger Rabbit series that the action is in 360 degrees and the characters are always in motion, something that didn't exist in the forties cartoons they're paying homage to.Mbr>