In the 'grammar' of western cinema, a continuum situation is established in the first reel, and an event intrudes upon that situation, thus launching the story. In this film the intervening event is a baseball crashing through a neighbourhood window. This being Disney, the context is an idealised suburban America, a world of neat lawns and plaid shirts, baseball mits and tall refrigerators, skateboards and electric toasters.
The Disney Corporation is revisiting the territory of "The Absent-Minded Professor" (1961). An eccentric scientist, working on experiments in his own home, is on the verge of a major research breakthrough. His discovery surprises him when it happens, and it disrupts the laws of the physical universe, causing havoc in the micro-universe of New England clapboard houses where he lives. In an overt reference to the earlier movie, there is even a character called Brainard in this one.
Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) is a misunderstood genius. Scoffed at by academics and despised by his next-door neighbour Russ Thompson, Wayne perseveres with his research into a raygun which can shrink physical objects in size. After a disheartening morning's work, Wayne leaves the house and forgets to switch off his shrinking-machine, which continues idling in the attic.
The Szalinski kids, Amy and Nick, are helping with the household chores. Amy is an attractive teenage girl and Nick is a chip off the old block - a geeky egghead with thick glasses, just like his dad.
Next door, the Thompsons are the archetype of American domesticity. Russ Senior is a baseball-capped lover of fishing trips and his wife Mae is a pleasant if unremarkable mom. Russ Junior has just been cut from the school football team, much to dad's chagrin, and is an uneasy teenager trying to work out what he wants. His kid brother Ronnie is an unself-conscious all-American rascal. In contrast to the Szalinskis, the Thompsons are resoundingly non-intellectual.
It is Ronnie's baseball which smashes through the Szalinskis' attic window and activates the shrinking-ray. The rest of the film is the tale of the four shrunken kids' odyssey from the garbage bag to safety, across the wild continental heartland of the Szalinskis' back yard.
There are plenty of good visual jokes in the film, as when Amy realises that she has 'spun' herself into a knot with the phone flex, or the giant-size dead fly that the kids pass as they cross the attic floor, or Wayne's colossal face looming over the kids in the garden. Moranis, expert farceur that he is, plays Wayne with consummate skill, enlivening a routine movie with nice acrobatic clownage.
The one central gag of the film, the oversize world in which the kids find themselves, is pulled off with aplomb. Giant insects, cigarette butts, screws and wormholes create the film's own internal logic which actually works, in spite of the ludicrous premiss of the story. The animation (as one would expect of Disney) is superb. The bee flight sequence is masterly, and the fight between the ant and the scorpion very effective.
Because this is a children's film, the animals have to be given endearing anthropomorphic traits. Quark, the Szalinskis' dog, is as much a character in the story as the humans are. "Anty", the baby ant who befriends the shrunken kids, behaves far more like a pet mammal than an insect, capable of exhibiting emotions such as sadness and loyalty.
And the human interactions are certainly not neglected. While the younger brothers Nick and Ronnie are out-and-out children, the teenagers have a different vantage point, and this is handled sensitively. The Szalinskis and the Thompsons each grow stronger as a family as a result of this ordeal, and the awkwardness between the two households is replaced by closeness and affection. Everyone is a better person by the end. Shrinking has helped them to grow.
Some interesting dualities are woven into the texture of the story. The Szalinski lawn, that ultimate symbol of suburban tameness, becomes a frightening jungle to the children. The scorpion is Creation's aggressive, predatory pole, the ant is the co-operative, altruistic side of our nature.
Nobody makes comedy-adventure nonsense better than Disney, and this is one of the corporation's triumphs.
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