Darling, I shrunk the kids (movie)

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Movie
German title Darling, I've shrunk the kids
Original title Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1989
length 89 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Joe Johnston
script Ed Naha ,
Tom Schulman ,
Stuart Gordon (Story)
Brian Yuzna (Story)
Ed Naha (Story)
production Penney Finkelman Cox
music James Horner
camera Hiro Narita
cut Michael A. Stevenson
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Darling, now we have a giant baby

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a science fiction - film comedy from the year 1989 . The film was Joe Johnston's directorial debut and was produced by Walt Disney Pictures . The film opened in German cinemas on December 14, 1989.

action

Wayne Szalinski is a brilliant but also absent-minded scientist who lives in a tranquil suburb with his wife Diane and their two children, Amy and Nick, and the dog Quark. He has equipped his house with his technical devices and is currently working on a machine in his attic with which he can reduce everything. But since his invention blows up the test objects instead of making them smaller, he despairs.

Wayne's work and manner do not please everyone, especially his neighbor Russell Thompson Sr., who feels disturbed in his sleep by the noise coming from the neighboring house. For the day he plans a fishing trip with his family (his wife Mae and two sons Russell Jr. and Ronald) and his buddies, the Forresters.

Meanwhile, Wayne goes to work and tries to convince some of his colleagues of his invention in a presentation, but they are not impressed without proof, which Wayne is very frustrated. At the same time, Amy and Nick are trying to spruce up the house before their mother comes home from work after staying with her sister after an argument with her husband. Nick tries to convince his friend Tommy to mow the lawn with the help of a modified lawnmower. He agrees, but only at a later point in time. At the same time, Ronald Thompson is playing baseball and accidentally hits the ball into the Szalinski's attic. In doing so, he unconsciously activates the heat shrink heater, which now actually shrinks the furniture in the room. The reason for the previous failures was an enormous amount of heat generated by the laser. Since this is now insulated by the baseball, the machine no longer overheats. Under pressure from his brother, Ronald is taken to the Szalinskis, who admits he accidentally hit the ball in the attic. When he and Nick go there with Ronald to get the ball, they are hit by the shrink spotlight's automatic targeting and shrunk to ¼ inch. Because Amy and Russell Jr. don't hear from them anymore, they look in the attic and are also hit and shrunk.

The four children have no choice but to wait for Wayne and ask him for help, who comes home shortly afterwards and also enters the attic in search of them, shortly after the machine switched itself off. However, all calls of the four remain unheard because they are too small for Wayne to perceive them. However, he is so frustrated by the incidents at work and the broken window that he skips this on his machine and cuts it short. He almost kills his children with the flying debris. When Wayne sweeps up the debris, he catches them, which are put together with the parts in a garbage bag, which is placed on the other side of the garden.

The children can get out of the garbage bag, but have to go back to the house and try again to get Wayne's attention through the garden, which seems almost infinite due to its size. At the same time, Diane returns home and makes up with Wayne. However, since there is no trace of the children, they worry about where they might be. When Nick tries to get the dog's attention, he and Russell Jr. fall into a flower that is shortly afterwards carried away by a honey bee who thinks the two are pollen. The same bee buzzes around Wayne, who tries to catch the bee with Ronald's baseball bat lying around. This allows the two to escape. But Wayne realizes what happened because Nick does not play any sport and is at the same time pleased that the machine did work, but also worried that the children have not only shrunk, but that he could have accidentally trampled them and leaves the garden immediately.

He then uses stilts and tries to find the children with a magnifying glass. In doing so, however, he accidentally triggers the sprinkler system. The resulting drops hit the children almost with the force of a tsunami, and Amy almost drowns, but is resuscitated by Russell Jr. When Wayne then confesses to his wife what happened to their children, she desperately joins the search. They systematically search the garden with a hanging device, but are unsuccessful due to the density of the grass. The Thompsons are also worried about their children's absence and are reporting them to the police as missing. Since the Szalinkis suspect that the Thompson children were also hit by the beam, they turn to them, but here too they have to face skepticism.

While the children were satisfying their hunger for one of Nick's cookies, they were attacked by an ant . Ronald wants to tame the ant in order to have a mount for the rest of the way back, but all attempts at taming fail until Amy calms the ant down with a piece of the biscuit. In fact, the ant can be tamed in this way and accompanies the children for a while until it is too dark to move on. The children find shelter in one of Nicks' lost Lego bricks . This is where Amy and Russell Jr., who has long had a romantic interest in her, but never dared to get close to her, get closer and kiss. Shortly afterwards, the group is attacked by a scorpion that surrounds Ronald in the Lego brick. The cries for help are heard by the ant, which immediately attacks the scorpion and can free Ronald. However, the ant has no chance and is fatally wounded by its sting. The children can then escape.

The next morning, Tommy, who doesn't know anything about the previous evening, comes to mow the lawn. The children are barely able to save themselves from a wormhole, but Nick is sucked up by the rotating lawnmower blades and almost chopped up. Only at the last moment can Wayne wrest the remote control from Tommy and save the children. When Quark becomes aware of the children, the children climb on him and finally get into the house. He jumps onto the table where Wayne is having Cheerios for breakfast. Nick falls into his plate and is almost swallowed by him. Only when Quark pinches Wayne's calf at the last moment does he stop him, Wayne recognizes his son and shortly afterwards the others. The relief is great and Wayne picks up his neighbors.

The relief is followed by frustration, because Wayne can repair the machine, but as at the beginning of the film, he says that the test objects explode. When Nick and the kids point out baseball to Wayne as a laser damper, Wayne comes up with the solution. He tests the machine on Russell Sr., who volunteers for it. The test passes and it is shrunk to the same size as the children. Both Russell Sr. and the children will then be restored to their original size. The two families get closer and sit together at the dinner table.

background

The directorial debut of Joe Johnston , who later realized film projects of similar size with Jurassic Park III and Hidalgo , was a financial success, he played on an estimated budget of 14.2 million US dollars at the US box office alone 130 million US dollars a.

Robotic creatures (the ants ) were also created here for the first time , a technique that Steven Spielberg took up four years later in Jurassic Park .

Trivia

The Polish name is a play on the character and activities of the protagonists : The verb szaleć means crazy his or rage .

There was a mistake in the film. During the presentation, Wayne named Albert Einstein as the inventor of the atomic bomb . However, he was not involved in the Manhattan project , but only signed the letter written by Leó Szilárd to the then US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , in which he warned him of the danger of Nazi Germany building a nuclear weapon , what that First got the project up and running. In addition to Szilárd, Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller are also considered inventors .

Sequels

Feature films

TV Shows

Awards

British Academy Film Award
  • Award in the Best Visual Effects category
Saturn Award
  • Nomination in the category of best science fiction film
  • Nomination for Best Young Leading Actor for Thomas Wilson Brown
  • Nomination in the category Best Young Leading Actor for Robert Oliveri
  • Nomination for Best Young Leading Actor for Jared Rushton
  • Nomination in the category Best Music
  • Nomination in the Best Special Effects category
Young Artist Award
  • Nomination in the category Best Comedy
  • Nomination for Best Young Leading Actor for Jared Rushton
  • Nomination for Best Young Leading Actress for Amy O'Neill

Reviews

  • “Wonderfully whimsical fantasy fairy tale from the cartoon treasure chest of the little play devils by Walt Disney.” - tz , Munich
  • “An old fairy tale fabric in a fashionable guise; full of tricky finesse, it presses the tear glands and diaphragm equally, but closes itself off with its fast-paced roller coaster staging style and the loud music of all kinds of poetry. ” - Lexicon of international film (CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997

DVD release

  • Honey, I Shrunk the Kids . In: Honey, I've shrunk . 3 DVD box set. Touchstone 2002

Soundtrack

  • James Horner : Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Original motion picture soundtrack . Intrada Records, Oakland 2009, Special Collection Volume 94 - Original recording of the score by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of James Horner

Web links