Chérie, j'ai rétréci les gosses

"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.

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!

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!

There were two things I enjoyed about this show. The first was the actors who actually did a better job than those in the movies. The second was how the show used (odd) science and magic to put a new spin on the problems facing the cast of countless other family sitcoms.

The boy wishes he was an adult, no problem, drink a potion and he becomes an adult. The girl has a stalker, but here he is an alien. The dad doesn't get the credit he deserves at work, but why should he when his invention turns the future into a dystopia.

But while the cast was great, and the action even greater. The one thing I did not like about it was that despite being a comedy show the dialog simply wasn't funny. I cannot remember a single time I laughed watching this.

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.