credit: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
You know, the line, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” sounds like one of those lame excuses by kids to cite things that wouldn’t happen. It’s in the same league as “My dog ate my homework” or “Phineas and Ferb are building a roller coaster in our backyard.” It just has that vibe.
Anyways, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a comedic science fiction movie that debuted in June 1989. Its story was about a frustrated inventor who created a shrinking ray but could not manage to make it work properly. What I mean by properly is how he intended it to work because the thing did work in the movie, but not in the way he would want it to work.
One time, the machine had gone rogue (for a reason we will be talking about below) and shrunk random things, living and non-living alike. And those living things included some neighbor’s kids and his own, and the movie evolved into a quest of those adults to find the shrunk kids while the kids made their way through the garden.
Now, we recognize that the movie is fictional and is intended to be funny. However, there are still points in the plot that do not make sense because a character did not act logically or the creators did not thoroughly think of what they would put in the set. Below, we will discuss three such things.
credit: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
1. Wayne Szalinski’s lab had no safety measures whatsoever
When you think of a laboratory, what do you think of it? Maybe you think of some elaborate place with some flasks in a sort of a cabinet, some delicate chemicals inside sealed containers (so they wouldn’t spill out), and even people in safety equipment like gloves and goggles.
You won’t be wrong when you think of that, but you would be if you were to think about Wayne’s lab. To begin with, his lab is easily accessible, so accessible that even a non-living thing, such as a baseball, can enter it. There wasn’t even any security measure in place. Maybe it would have been better if, just for that room, there were glass panels of higher quality. You know, the one that wouldn’t be easily broken?
Wayne’s just lucky that it was an inanimate object that entered. There might be something worse that could have entered, like a robber at night.
Okay, let’s just say that there wasn’t any baseball that flew inside. Now, his machine was still shooting beams at an apple. Needless to say, it was active.
The children were able to enter the lab! Please tell me they gave them the keys because of how terrible that idea would be. There’s still a far more dangerous alternative. That alternative would be that the kids were just able to walk straight up there with no problem because the door was unlocked.
2. Trying to kill a bee with a bat
There are many expressions in different languages to express the idea of using something that would overkill an otherwise tiny opponent. In English, we have “to kill a fly using a bazooka.” In Korean, we have “Don’t use your sword to kill a fly.”
Now, when the kids were riding a bee, it came too close to Wayne’s position in the yard. Now, any normal human being would just swerve their arms to ward off the insect. Even better, they would run inside their home and slam the door shut!
However, Szalinski was not. What he chose to do was to swat a bee with a bat when there would be way better solutions to his bee problem. It gave a new version to the idiom, didn’t it?
credit: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
3. The use of crutches
I know that they were trying to avoid stepping on the grass because the kids, who were now “the size of boogers,” were somewhere in the grass. If they were on the brick pathways, they would easily be seen, so there was no need to find them if they were there. I get it.
But what I did not get was Wayne’s usage of something resembling crutches and walked in the grass with some magnifiers to find the kids. What difference would it make if they opted to use their legs to walk on the grass instead? Nothing! They would still step on the shrunk children and crush them if they happened to be beneath them! They were not playing The Floor is Lava here. They’re trying to not accidentally step on tiny kids!
