Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show

When I first heard of this series, I thought it was going to be a stupid, corny, throw-away series. After a few episodes, however, I was pleasantly surprised. The family is perfectly casted (they're better than their original movie counterparts), and the dialogue is original and funny, which is the basis of this show's success. The plots are extremely corny (e.g. family gets trapped inside of T.V., family harbors a bigfoot couple, and family travels back to the Wild West days with some aliens) but amazingly they are able to pull them off with sharp dialogue and very creative elements (e.g. every comment is punctuated, very humorously, with a laugh track when trapped inside a sitcom, and the bigfoot couple whine and bicker like married humans). It's sad that the show is so underrated and has such a obscure time slot (11:00 AM, Sundays).

Before the review, a brief plot summary: Wayne Szalinski is a brilliant and eccentric inventor working for Mr. Jennings at GENTEK. Happily married with a lawyer named Diane for a wife, he has a son, Nick (who follows in the tradition of his father) and a daughter Amy (witty but a bit spoiled). Neighbour to Police Chief Jake McKenna and his family, Wayne is the inventor of the shrink ray, the time hopper, the fully equipped van, and several other wacky creations which, whie functioning almost exactly as they were supposed to, always somehow backfire, sending the family into situations involving crime, aliens and the supernatural.

For one thing, the cast is far better than the movie. Peter Scholari is amazing at Wayne and far better than Rick Moranis, and these actors potray the characters and their relationships far more easily and with more wit. Now potraying Wayne's job and the people at work, this is like a sitcom... only much better.

The titles are always amusing, with examples like "Honey, The House Is Trying To Kill Us", "Honey, We're Past Tense" and "Honey, I'm The Wrong Arm Of The Law", and the one-liners make James Bond blush. "Deader than a Charlie Sheen flick", "When you have a brainstorm, it's a drizzle", and "The mayor will be back in six months, his term was shortened on good behaviour" are some of my favourites. Like Stephen King, When the plots are explained, they sound silly and corny, ie the van is shrunk and falls into Grampa's drink ("Honey, We've Been Swallowed By Grandpa"), a machine sucks them into the Tv ("Honey, We're On TV), and that Wayne inherits a billionaire's brain to re-animate ("Honey, It's A Billion Dollar Brain"). However, also like Stephen King, they are executed well. Unlike "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves", "Honey, I Blew Up The Kid" and those other cheap sequels, of course.

The spoofs are also very amusing. For example, in "From Honey, With Love" Wayne is showing some foreign buyers some metal at GENTEK, which they try to steal, when Dalton Pierce shows up. He's a Canadian secret agent, and impressed by Wayne's gadgets. He joins Dalton's organization taking the code letter P ("Oh, I can just hear: 'Let's get P on this one'."). When the superspy is accidently blinded by one of Wayne's inventions, P takes his place, trying to trap a villian on the Canadian submarine Scotia. He finds it has been abandoned and the villian has left explination of his death (the way villians would tell Bond) on the computer, where Wayne can listen like on voice mail, "If you were suprised, press one. If you saw it coming, press two." Wayne then finds a bomb left to destroy the ship, and, when failing to disarm it, uses his hand-held shrink ray to turn it into a tiny explosion. Better than Austin Powers, Get Smart or Spy Hard.

Theres so much more about this show I cant list it all, see it for urself!

This show is under-rated and deserves more acclaim. It is a fine series of far-out adventures which always keep you entertained. The dialogue is witty, the characters are perfectly cast and despite the low plausibility of some of the material this is always forgiven. The plot of some of the episodes ,aliens taking over the world, a corporate leader turning everybody into choose are as entertaining as many blockbuster films, and the storylines make constant reference to fairytales and make satirical references. This deserves to be bigger than it is, catch it if you can.

This is a television show that for its three season run consistently had some of the best writing ever seen on television. Comedies are rarely given much recognition and commercial shows for kids, never, but Honey, I Shrunk the Kids episodes are really well-crafted, witty spoofs that stand up over time. The best episode I feel is about Morpheus who rules the dream world. In this show, Nick is worried about dissecting frogs and keeps having nightmares. His sister, Amy, is worried about taking her SAT's. The plot weaves together their fears and their personal strengths and weakness (nick is logical/Amy is intuitive) in a humorous, dramatic and meaningful way. If there were any justice in the world, this script should have won an emmy and be discussed in film and English classes. If this show ever comes out on DVD, it is definitely worth purchasing.

The kids are well casted, the parents are loving and humorous. They are truly better casted than the movie. The characters do a fantastic job, and they work. They're compatable, they have loving moments. Even though the fathers problematic inventions can make plans go awry, they make it through and with pleasantly funny moments. The best episode is the one where the father joins a Canadian spy mission, and so does the family. They actually shrunk the moon.