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).

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.

"Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" is the rare film-to-TV series that beats its source material. While the movies are often plodding, cumbersome messes with anonymous characters, "HISTK" the TV series is firmly grounded in Matheson, Colorado, a sort of Anytown U.S.A. where anything can happen. Realistic science is, thankfully, tossed out the window: it's supposed to be a silly romp through suburbia fueled by wild creations from the Szalinskis.

I dare say the casting and acting is better than all the movies. Peter Scolari replaces the recognizable Rick Moranis, and actually does an even better job at the character. Scolari's Szalinski is a family man who invents things that go wrong, but he still has enough charm to make his relationship with his wife and kids reasonable. Barbara Alyn Woods makes what could have been a typical "Mom" character into an interesting, intelligent, and active co-conspirator/victim/commentator on the happenings in the household. Hillary Tuck and Thomas Dekker play the Szalinski kids, with Amy being a witty, sarcastic-but-never-irritating rival to Nick's sensible, science-minded personality. They form a believable family, more believable than most "normal" sitcoms on primetime.

Created by Kevin Murphy (he also created the brilliant "Weird Science" TV show on USA with Vanessa Angel), the show's stories are often breezy, sometimes predictable, but never boring. Unfortunately, HISTK is over (it had a three-season run), but, for my money, it remains a memorable comedy/scifi with truly likable characters.

I too thought that this would be a hacked rip off of the movie. Boy what a supreme surprise. The show was infinitely better then the movie. Then I realised why this series was so clever and so awesomely funny and intelligent -Savage Steve Holland who did the acidic and hilarious 'better off dead' movie, was directing these. And this has even wound up on the Disney Channel - go figure!

I remember watching loads of episodes as a kid and watched the movie only after having watched the TV show and it didn't stand up to the stuff that Szalinskis were pulling on the TV.

There were sub-plots involving all characters and every episode featured a new invention which went awry. It was well-acted and the humor for a kids' show was spot on. There were Bigfoots, aliens, ghosts, international spy agencies even noir. There was goofy humor, some fanservice from the beautiful Diane (red dress), Mr Jennings as the funny boss, Jake Mckenna as the neighbor who inevitably ends up involved in Wayne's schemes.

Tbh most of the Disney live action shows that came after did not even stand close to it. And given the state of live action tv from Disney right now, its better they don't remake it unless they can rediscover the 'fun' spirit of the original