Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (1989) - Documentaries, Duran Duran & a Balanced Breakfast

I'm walking down Third Street yesterday, and what should I spy with my little eye in front of me? But this raccoon just just in the middle of the day, it was it was three pm. No, and this raccoon, by the way, you might think mangy, you might think, you might think, you might think thin. No, this this was a fat raccoon, which did make it cute.

New York City doesn't have sen raccoons. New York City has. It has two types of raccoons, fat and muscular.

Yes, And this raccoon, like it looked like a drag queen that was padded for the gods.

Like just swinging.

His or her or their hips right down Third Street.

Real raccoons have curves.

Falls, right, and like, look, do not approach raccoons on the street.

But I was like, you go girl. From a far distance, I was like what.

She started to tork.

To work it. She made them cheeks clap, she did.

My college roommate instilled the fear of God of raccoons into me the first time we were in Central Park. So I was like a dumb Florida kid who'd never really been around raccoons. She was like, oh, pretty, pretty, pretty burn cool, and my college roommate who grew up in Ohio was like, get away from it.

It's ferrel, it is not ranger Rick.

It will rip your face off with the supposable thumbs, it can get into your house.

Meanwhile, I was like, take a selfie with me.

Hey, I'm Paul in America and this is that aged.

Well, yesterday's pop culture today.

And we are in the midst of Crazy Technology Month. We're talking about crazy technology.

It is the year twenty twenty five, but in our hearts it is nineteen eighty. Laser beam.

That's right, nineteen eighty laser beam was such a good time when technology wasn't so feared.

Was both futuristic and super old timy all at the same time.

And deeply deeply stupid. That's the other key ingredient, deeply stupid. We're talking about some dumb technology in this episode. But first, first, we do have some five star of Ustrea. Do you wanna read the first one?

Sure? Our first review comes from Noel m a Q Love you guys. I'm not sure how I stumbled across this pod, but so happy I did. I'm fifty four. Hell yeah, gen X, Yeah see you.

We see you.

So I was a teen in the eighties. I am so jealous of people who are teens in the eighties, because being a teen in the nineties was way less fun. It was fun, don't get me wrong. It's better than being a teen any other time since. But I am sella jealous of people who got to live in the glorious, absolutely dumb eighties and be teenagers in.

That ees got to be shaped by those movies, in the way that we were shaped by the nineties movies.

Who got to wear their hair with the all the aquinet before we realized that was gonna be a problem yep.

Yep, hair sprayed with care free insussients.

Oh my god, and whose parents were so coked out they were just like, just do your thing, girl, I don't care. I don't care.

I'm still mad about them taking key parties away from us, so you can parent yourself.

So Noel goes on to write love the recaps, the laughs, the banter, and the honest opinions even when I disagree, kind of love that I found this a few years in, so I won't run out of episodes for a long time. Thanks for covering all my fais. Oh my God, they got to experience Madonna in real time, Paul, in real time, in real time. They didn't come to it late like the rest of us.

When they made a mixtape, it was an actual tape and sometimes they had to take a pencil and they had to roll the tape back up.

Yeah that's so so satisfying.

Yeah, that's the best. That's the best. All right. We have another review.

This one comes from Podchaser and it was written by Kelly Dot Pillsbury, an heiress to the Pillsbury fortune.

Brohups, Oh she's her father is the dough boy.

That's right?

Yeah, yeah, he's a dough man.

Now he's a dope man.

Kelly Dot Pillsbury writes, absolutely fabulous podcast. I started with the movies that I loved, then the movies that I hate, and I'm finishing with the movies I haven't seen yet. I want an example of one you loved when you hated and one you haven't seen.

I'm very curious. I want a cross section.

May I suggest either Love Actually or Robinhood Prince of Thieves, both of which are loathsome aside from Alan.

Rickman, ooh boy, have I got good news for you? Kelly Dot Pillsbury. We have since covered both of those films, so.

That is incorrect. We have only covered Love Actually yes.

No, no, no, we did Robinhood Prince of Thieves.

Well, we did it.

The other one. We did the other one we did we did the belt Brooks.

Robinhood, Yeah, Robino Mednett.

Basically the same movie call.

This year has been full of assurances from you that we have done movies that we have absolutely not done. On this podcast, you're spreading misinformation like it like it's like its seeds on a field.

Just call me Fox News baby, because I am out here just spread lies.

You're a dandelion, just spraying all that stuff everywhere.

I for five seconds was like I was gonna fight you on this line. I was gonna get sassy, and then I was like, no, wait, hang on, I'm wrong. I'm definitely wrong. Alan Rickman is so sexy in Robinhood Prince of Eve's.

You have said this before.

I'm very curious, absolutely no right to be.

And I think you also said the Christian Slater wasn't, which really feels like a body swap situation.

Christian Slater is one too young for me to find them sexy personally and two doing just the worst English accent you've ever heard. Take Drew Barrymore and ever if you're in multiply it by five lovely, it's that bad.

I love to hear it, all right, Noel MQ, Kelly Pillsbury, thank you so much for these reviews. We love them. If you would like at that a twelve tope bag, just let us know this is you. I will send it off for you. Erica, what is the film today?

Today's film is the nineteen eighty nine sci fi comedy Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

This movie needed more sound effects, needed more sound trombone, slide, whistle, whoope, cushion, that kind of thing it did.

It needed fewer aunt deaths. Fuck that part of this movie. Don't make me fall in love with an animatronic ant and then murder it. How dare you so?

Honey?

I Shrugged the Kids was requested by Caroline Meghan Kelly with An I Kelly with a Y, steph Andy, Nanette, Danielle Son, Arah, Rebecca, Elise, Lauri, Mara, Nicole, Sophie, Miggy, Paula s Melissa, Dilia Allison, Sydney Ellen I couldn't get through it. K h Franziela, rob Ina Neurssa Morgan, k Lee Mary, and some people whose names I could not get off of the internet.

How do you like that?

Damn? This month got so many responses?

It did all right, Honey Shrunk. The Kids was written by Ed Naha and Tom Schulman. It was directed by Joe Johnston and stars Rick Moranis, Marcia Strassman, Matt Frewer, Christine Sutherland, Amy O'Neill, Robert Oliveri, Thomas Wilson, and one that Aged Twell icon known as Jared.

Rushton Jared Russian for those of you who don't know his name off top of your head. This is our third film with Jared Russian. He is a child actor extraordinaire from the eighties. He was in Overboard. He was the smart kid in the family of I think Paul called them fear erl Raccoons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was the smart one in that fam. Here's the inventor and he was Billy frum Big.

The original best kid, the.

Original best kid ever, Paul. This film has a best kid contender.

I would actually submit it might have two best kid contenders.

I see where you're going, I see where you're coming from. Okay, I'm gonna say just one, because one of them is so much better than all the other kids.

Fair enough, I think I know who the number one is. There's a number one with a bullet What the fuck?

Yeah, yeah, honey. I Shrunk The Kids was an unexpected smash hit, spawning two sequels, a TV series, several theme park attractions. It was the highest grossing live action Disney film for five years, possibly being unseated by Missus Doubtfire. The Internet did not give Paul a clear answer on that, and he lost interest in the question.

I started frankly, I was like searching like live action Disney movies from like like four years in the future, six years in the future, five years in the future. The only thing I can come up with in this is Doubtfire.

Okay, I'm gonna skip ahead to one of our questions from later. I'm going to talk about when I first saw this movie.

Okay.

I first saw this movie in the theater with my family, sure, and then I saw it for the second time yesterday.

Okay.

However, I remembered a lot of this movie, and I was trying to figure out, why do I know this movie so goddamn well? And that is because I have ridden the ride at Epcot Center, oh probably five times.

Okay, and I.

Was like, oh my god, I know this movie through the ride at Epcot.

And how accurate was the ride? Was it? Plot? Was it plot accurate?

Plot wise? I don't remember. I mean, yeah, we got shrunk and we got big, That's yeah, that's it. But like scenery, wy, I was like, man, I remember what this backyard looks.

Like in this movie.

And that's because, through the magic of Disney, I was transported there several times as a kid.

Well that you know that is important. Theme park representation, Yes, yea.

Theme parks matter, is what I'm saying.

They They absolutely do. They particularly matter because I don't ever want to go to one. So everyone should enjoy theme parks without me. Thank you, please, and thank.

You did she never go to one as a kid ever.

I went to a couple as a kid. We would go to like six Flags. I never cared for them.

Look, I don't want to look maybe I'm going native here, being full Floridian, Like, maybe I don't want to sound like I'm encouraging people to come to Florida more than I actually am. But I'm telling you there is something really I mean, we're too old now, but like seeing Disney World when you're like twelve years old is so fucking nice.

I went to Disney World once.

I was on tour and we were in the area, so we went to Disney World on our day off. I went to the Magic Kingdom and I got a picture with Prince John from the animated Robin Hood and that.

That was my See that's a magical moment, Paul.

It was, yeah, yeah, so, and no one forced me to get on any goddamn roller coasters, which is also great.

Oh the thing about Disney, about Magic Kingdom is there are no actually bad roller coasters. Okay, The problem is is your family went to real places with real fucking rides. The Disney ones are meant for like the soft, hardest children of all of us to go on them. Yeah.

I was a very soft boy. We all know this.

Erica, a fourth sequel, was expected to be filmed in twenty twenty, with Rick Moranis having signed on to come out of retirement to film another Honey I Shrunk the Kids movie. For some reason, filming didn't happen. We don't need to get into it. Something happened in twenty twenty that paused this project and it has not been repicked up. It has stalled.

Oh no, sir, Branna's come back. Baby. I feel like Dan Levy needs to write something for Rick, for Rick miranas right, he needs to get his father.

In him the Canadian connection in a room.

Together with Catherine O'Hara and be like, hey, I've written this for you. Three do yes? Yes, yeah, perfect, honey. I Shrunk the Kids has a seventy six percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a fifty four percent audience score.

Yeah.

It has an eighty six percent critical rating on Cherry Picks, perhaps because of the representation of one great kid.

Yeah, one particular fantastic kid.

When wonderful Best Kid contender, the first female Best Kid contender. I think we've ever.

Had on this, I believe so Yeah.

Yeah that audience score Who hurt you America?

Yeah?

Who hurt you?

I don't get it, I really don't.

It was funny because when I first saw this, I was like, wait, is there something that has aged so horribly that the audience score has like plummeted since its released because.

I remembered it being a huge hit. But no, I don't get it.

This film is delightful. The only honestly, the only thing I could possibly think of is it's adult who don't realize it's just how much of a kid's movie this is?

I guess.

Yeah. However, the clue is in the title. What did you think you were going in for?

Right?

If you were like, well, this is such a fucking kids movie. Yeah, it's about four children, we get shrunk.

It's not like Rick Moranis is known for like serious like period pieces. It was like, you know, you're getting silly if you get Rick Moranis.

Oh my god, Dan Levy, I know you're a listener. Yeah, period piece, serious period piece. It may be an adaptation of Jane Eyre. I don't know. Yeah, Starr as Jane as Jane and Eugene Levy as Rochester.

Let's do it. Let's do it.

Let's do it.

Let's just remake the English patient with the Uh okay, Erica, you already answered the next question, so we know when you first saw the movie. When did I first see the movie? I'm like ninety five percent sure I saw this at home, like on a on a Blockbuster rental. I remember seeing the sequel in the theater because when we first did this, when we first staid we're going to do this, I was like, Oh, Kerrie Russell's in that, and you were like, she is.

I was like, yeah, it's Kerry Russell. She's not. She is in the sequel. She is the babysitter.

Oh, I have not seen any The only part of this franchise I have participated in is the film and the Epcot Center ride, which I'm not even sure is still a thing. So wow, So you saw the second one. What happens in the second one? How does this happen?

The family has another baby and rather than shrinking them, he like enlarges him.

So it's honey, I blew up the kid.

And then they have like this like Godzilla like infant, like wandering around Nevada or something like that.

Oh yeah, I'm glad I haven't seen that.

I don't remember it well enough to offer a critical take on it. I saw it once in the theaters and then never again. But for some reason, remember that Cary Russell was in it.

You love you saw some carry Russell.

I do love Carry Russell. You're right, You're right, all right, Erica. Are you ready for the tagline? Yes, the most astonishing, innovative backyard adventure of all time.

No, that's bad. That's so bad, it's dumb. You can't have a title as good as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Yeah, and then a bad tagline.

Tagline should just be whoops.

Honestly, you nailed it so hard with the title. I don't think you need a tagline. This film could go taglineless.

The title is the tagline.

The title is the tagline. The title is everything.

Like if the title of the movie was a backyard adventure or whatever something, then Honey, I Shrunk the Kids could be the.

Tag perfect right, Okay, moving on, moving.

Moving on, moving on. Would you like me to read the iTunes synopsis?

Sure?

Rick Moranas Stars is a preoccupied inventor who just can't seem to get his electromagnetic shrinking machine to work. Then, when he accidentally shrinks his kids down to one quarter inch tall and tosses them out in the trash, that that is libel or that is yellow journalism right there.

I don't think I don't think he's there one quarterage. I think they're smaller than that.

Honestly, the stize these kids goes down is a moving target.

Give us a lot of really dodgy science happening in this film, like what they can and can't hear, and why you've gotta just place all of that at the door and be like, just go with it, just let it flow over me like art yeap exactly.

So, the synopsis goes on, he tossed them into the trash and the real adventure begins. Now the kids face incredible dangers as they try to make their way home through the jungle of their own backyard. Hurricane sprinklers, dive bombing bees, a runaway lawnmower, and much much more that is not a runaway lawnmower that is not dive bombing bees.

This is terrible. This is misrepresenting everything that is.

A little bit dive bombing bees. I'm gonna go I'll give them dive I'll give them dive bombing bees.

The bees just being the bee is just doing what bees do.

Yeah, but it is also dive bombing. The synopsis does not include any mention of the most tragic figure in the film, and that is the man next door, mister Russell. Thompson.

He's a Greek tragic figure, and.

Greek tragic figure that is Russell Thompson.

Do you have an actual sis? Did they includes Russell? Aha?

We should do like a documentary about Russell and be like like a nature film narrated by Burderherzog. Being like and now look as the toxic man tries to smoke a cigarette, fearful of his own insignificance in ever expanding universe.

Or narrative, but like David Attenborron, like here, we watch as the toxic man attempts to feel things around his son's. Note how he struggles with his facial expressions and cannot express anything other than rage. Will we learn by the end of the film. We can only hope.

Just watch as he ignores his second son to curry favor with the one who hates him. It is his tragic cycle that he will live on forever, like Pycifus, forever, however, carrying the weight of toxic masculinity up the hill of death.

I think that's an excellent actual synopsis. The boulder of masculinity up the hill of death. Excellent, that's poetry. All right, everyone, stick around, We will be right back after some messages you don't want to hear ads you skid doat all. Over to the Patreon that is patreon dot com slash dot age well podcast. You sign up at any paid level and we will provide for you ad free episodes, and more and more. You get to vote, you could get thanked, you could get a bonus content. All of

We open on hooray an animated credits perfect. That's when you know it's gonna be a good one.

Yeah, it is.

The animated credit sequence never misses.

Look, I'm just gonna start here. My expectations were low. Sure, I went in going all right, maybe this is fine, probably has some pretty shitty things in it that we're gonna have to call out. Blah blah blah, Paul, this movie is a goddamn gym. It is so enjoyable.

I was really preparing for like some uses of like the R word. I feel like I just thought that that's just like endemic of being made in the eighties or the nineties, whenever this was made the right late eighties.

Yeah, but also it's four kids, and it is the best kind of four kids movie. It's the Goonies. If you think about it, it's like you take a bunch of kids who don't really like each other, put them in a situation where they're in danger, and then they all become best friends.

And they only scream when it is appropriate for them to scream. When they're delivering their lines, they deliver it in a normal volume of voice, which I greatly appreciated.

Yeah, I really liked this movie. Now as a forty something year old watching it on my couch at home, did I ever so slightly wander sometimes? Yeah, sure, I know they're going to get home, and I don't need I don't need a five minute sequence of them doing something. Yeah, but like that was rare, and honestly, the movie like moves fast.

It does there.

There was a moment in the movie where I was like, I don't really think if this happened in reality, all four of those kids are getting home.

I think one makes it.

Oh Honestly, I was like, A these kids should never they you know what, we'll get back, We'll get there's a moment where they reunite after being separated, and I'm like, Nope, no fucking way correct. So okay, we see in the animated title sequence, two kids, shrunk down in size, flee from and around household objects that have been transformed into obstacles and hazards by their relative size.

We smashed cut to a suburban street and into the Zolensky house. I did the recap for this one. The number of times I had to type the word Zelensky.

I'm so sorry.

Like someone's ancestors didn't go through Ellis Island. That would have been Smith in a hot second.

If I was like, this is rough, that would have been Silence. Silence, My last name is silence. Uh.

In the house, there are there's a Rube Goldberg invention for everything from the toaster to the phone, the kind of inventions that you're like, are these really saving time?

They are not. But also the eighties wrote I've said this before and I'll say it again, the eighties wrote a check that life did not cash because I thought Rube Goldberg type machines were going to be such a huge part of my existence based on I'm not kidding, this is like the seventh film we've done. That's sad one of these. Yeah, and we haven't even done the best one, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Oh boy, that is the best Rue Goldberg Machine. I stand by it. I

You know what.

I agree because I remember as a kid being fascinated, Yeah, fascinated. Oh I can click this button and eighteen different things will happen, and suddenly someone will hand me a piece of toast.

I will never ever have to crack an egg as an adult on this planet.

That's rover, because I'm not a peasant.

All right.

So the Zelinski's teenage daughter Amy played by Amy O'Neil.

Look, let's get out of the way. This is the best kid candidate.

This is our best kid contender in this film. Okay? Is she better than Chris from stand By Me? No? No, But I'm gonna put her in Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez territory.

In my ranking.

I'm still saying Chris from stand By Me, Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez. I think Amy is edging out Billy from Big for that third spot. She may be getting the bronze medal.

Billy is still more ingenious than she is.

Yeah, but the thing about Billy is he requires a lawful good to balance out his chaotic neutral alignment.

You know what I mean?

Yeah? Yeah, she is smarter than Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, which is why I'm almost putting her neck and neck with that kid.

Oh, if we're awarding intelligence, yeah, she is smarter than Benjamin frank I can admit that. I just think that Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez.

She has the emotional intelligence of Benjamin Franklin.

Now see there there, that's where he shines. He has more emotional intelligence than Amy. She has more book smarts she does.

But what she does for her family, the emotional labor her family forces her to do on top of physical labor.

Yeah, it's borderline Cinderella is what we're talking about.

This girl is doing too much for six.

I'm gonna be building a case today for Amy Slazynski. Sazynski whatever, however, is pronounced to be a best kid.

So Amy, we're just gonna start here. She's making breakfast for her younger brother, Nick, played by Robert OLIVERI, who's he's like eight or nine ish.

This kid is nuclear level cute.

Yeah, he looks like a puppy.

There is a Jack Russell terrier in this film that they showed like giant, enormous close ups of its adorable little nose, and I still think this kid is cuter.

Yeah. Amy's on the phone.

She's gleefully telling a friend that quote unquote, Paul broke up with his girlfriend and she's meeting him at the mall later and maybe, just maybe he's gonna invite me to the dance.

I don't know. She's very excited.

There's a lot of sick burns in this movie, like truly excellent sick burns, and here's one of them. She's talking about Paul's ex girlfriend, Unseen the Unseen Girl, and she's telling her friend they broke up for religious reasons. She thought she was God and he disagreed. Nailed it, damn it, Amy, Now why are you coming in so hard?

Meanwhile, Nick is playing like with legos or like little building toys in a lab coat, constructing something that looks like a futuristic laser. So what we have here is like Amy's the popular high school student, her little brother is more of a nerd. Amy tells her friend that their parents had an argument the night before, so her mother spent the night at her parents' house. So her

I have had it up to here with my f reckliss husband. That's the tenor of it, right. Rick moranis is so wrapped up in his own thing that he's he's ignored his family and his and he's he's become a burden to his own family, and the mom has had it. The movie sets this up like it's like like you're gonna see some draw to the mo. Yeah, it just does not come back.

It doesn't. It doesn't.

The parents had a very normal like marital spat. It feels like in which the person who was wrong, which is Rick moranis immediately kind of admits that he was wrong and like everything seems to be baseline fine, maybe not great, but it's gonna be okay.

He's too yell at each other, way less than the other couple who's very happy together.

Yeah.

So Amy wrings her father in his lab in the attic, and we cut upstairs to find Wayne Zelinski, played by the great and good Rick moranis, yes, hard at work on his shrink ray. Yeah, he is a science He's a mad scientist, but adorable.

He is the kind of character that need Rick moranis to play. So you're not like this man is a menace and should be jailed.

Truly.

The casting is aces across the board to everyone, adults and kids, because the adults, the adult actors, the two fathers in particular, really balance a tightrope between being terrible and adorable, and they both managed to do it. So he sends down a message to his daughter over a keyboard that's like prototypical, like bad bad texting. This movie walk so bad texting could run. It says be down on fine mimics, which Amy reads and immediately says she

Buffy's mom is in this movie. We have a Buffy's mom's sighting.

First of all, Christine Sutherland's not in the FCOT ride. So truly, the one time I saw this movie, I did not know who Buffy's mom was. I did not understand the gift I was being given.

That's right, if we talk about best parents in like pop culture, Buffy's mom's in the conversation.

You mean this character here that she's.

Made No, No, I mean I mean I mean Joyce Summers on Buffy Joyce Summers.

Yes, but also May Thompson.

Yeah, you don't cast Christine Sutherland to play a bad mom.

You just don't what she has to put up with with the men in her life. It's a lot.

She Frankly, she.

Doesn't have an amy, right, she doesn't have an amy to carry, to carry the burden.

And she's not pulling the escape patch and ejecting herself out for a night to take a take a sleep at the local four seasons.

Oh she can't.

It's not allowed.

If May Thompson leaves the house for fifteen minutes, those three, those three kangaroos that she lives with, just start destroying everything you see, like a kangaroo with boxing gloves on. That's who she's living with, three of those, yep. And they're just circling each other, looking for a fight, just begging each other to say the wrong thing.

You are correct. We have sung the praise of Christine Sutherland. I really want to quickly just say Matt Frewer is also like an amazing character actor.

People might know him.

He's Max Headroom, Headroom, Max Headroom, and he's also the big bad doctor on Orphan Black, and that is my association with him, and I was like, oh no, this guy's gonna be creepy. And he fights through all of that association to be like, oh no, I get you.

I like you.

You're absolutely right because he plays a character that's almost top to bottom unlikable yep, but he imbues it with so much vulnerability. Yeah, I got all my biggest laughs from that guy.

I notice how the toxic man starts crying as soon as he turns away from his family. This is the pain that he can no longer suppress once he is not under their judgmental gazes, uch as.

He puts a cigarette in his mouth for a brief moment, tasting the joy of freedom before it is ripped away from him. Okay, so the Thompsons are in their home. They're trying to sleep in because it's a Saturday morning.

But that is important. It is Saturday, that's gonna come up later.

That is important. It is during the school year, So these two are trying to sleep in. Unfortunately, Wayne's work next door is loud enough to wake Russell up. Russell is so irritated He's like, I'm gonna go over there and I'm gonna kill that guy. And he's a bit of a rage monster.

Yeah.

May is like she's she's she's unflappable, and she's also like not scared at all of her husband, who she knows is all barket. Note By they manage these very gendered tropes in this movie in a way that's skillfully enough done that I'm not annoyed by it. I am almost annoyed by it. If I'm being honest, I am almost annoyed by it, but I'm not.

I also think this one is a little more nuanced oddly than the lead one. Like like the Zelenski's, I found a little bit more frustrating than the Thompson's.

For me, it's the other way around, only because the Zelenskis aren't following like the gender norms. Okay, the time, she's a breadwinner. She's the you know, she's the person who handles there, and he's just kind of this like aloof guy in the backgrounds. It's like she has another kid, almost all right.

So Russell storms outside, only to be caught in the makeshift trap that his younger son, Ron played by Jared Rushton also known as Billy from Big has set up to ward off intruders.

Ron is twelve.

Russell winds up with one of those suction cupped arrows super glued to his forehead. So this is important. Ron, the younger kid, is the son that Russell kind of wants. He likes fishing, he likes camping, he likes, for lack of a better term, guy stuff.

It's stuff like this that makes this movie sing because it's like this younger kid is basically emulating his father in every way, the way the younger son and the other family is emulating his father in every way. They're each other's heroes, and yet the fathers are kind of both absent in their lives. It's really well does thoughtful this movie.

So Russell storms back in the house with May following him. Ron has the suction cupped arrows attached.

To a fishing line.

I think, yeah, And he gets a certain distance, he says he's sounding, and then he yanks it, ripping the arrow off his father's head. Now I assume sounding has something to do with fishing. I made the mistake because I didn't think about it first of just looking up sounding on the Google machine, and don't do that, because it means something different that I actually did know about prior to I just didn't think about it in the moment. If you want to look us up, look up sounding meaning in fishing.

Oh okay, yeah, I've seen what you're seeing. Now, I saw what you saw.

Yeah.

I don't want to talk about that.

No, neither do I I'm just warning people I don't know what sounding means in fishing. Still because any information was destroyed by the first Google.

Yeah, first Google, your computer was like, are you sure, okay, okay, it's a technique that uses sound waves to locate fish and measure water depths. I don't. That's the first thing that came up, and I receive used to look into it further.

Frankly, we've again lost interest in the question prior to getting a good answer.

That's our theme for this episode.

I've been fishing exactly once. It was fine, it was fine.

I've been fishing exactly once. It was terrible.

Oh, I didn't mind it so much. Beating the hook was the only part. I didn't want to do, none of it. Pass. I did get to scale and guta fish once. That was pretty fun, hard pass. I don't know why that was okay, But the hook part was I was like no.

So while all this is going on, we quickly cut to Amy just doing chores inside the house and she comments, weird family, right, So we have this setup of like this kind of frenemy relationship between the two neighbors.

Yeah, by the way, Amy doing housework without being asked, yep, just without complaint, doing her best. She burns the toast her brother's like, I can't eat that, and she's like, well then you're not eating That's good parenting. So we cut upstairs in the Celensky house. Quork, the family dog played by Sammy, the goddamn cutest Jack Russell terrier you ever did see.

And also the true hero of the film.

Yeah, dogs are the best. We don't deserve dogs. We don't deserve dogs. There have been Jack Russell terriers in a lot of pop culture. This is the jewe law of Jack Russell terriers. This is the handsomest boy that ever handsomed.

Wow Moose from Fraser.

Alert, Sorry Moose from Fraser Got's fired?

Yea burnt? That one Jack Russell terrier that was in that great movie Beginners with You and McGregor. Ye burnt. So Quark watches as Wayne, desperate to make his invention work, gives the shrink ray an apple to try on. So he's trying to shrink an apple down and he's staring at it as the shrink ray is doing his shrink ray thing, and he's like, come on, shrink, shrink, shrink,

That happened my exact note.

You would have thought a bushel had gone off in that room.

How did that much flesh come from one single red, delicious apple.

Also, there is a glop of it on Rick Moranis's cheek that looks like jizz. Look, I'm not proud that I made that association during this movie, but that's just that is what it is. Am I wrong?

Don't worry. You're not wrong. Don't worry.

There's more jiz content coming in this episode. Everyone buckle up.

Oh do you know what? That's the only jizz content I recall. But I was like, I was a little grossed out by. I was like, you know, take that off of Rick Brannis's face. Any other actor I'd be fine with it, but not Rick Frannis.

Back at the Thompson's, Russell and May greet their older son. The movie calls him little Russ. I'm just gonna call him Russ. Russ is the kid. Russell is the father done. He is played by Thomas Wilson. He's kind of an age with Amy. I think he's meant to be the same age. The movie isn't one hundred percent.

Clear on that they're like sixteen.

Yeah.

A big part of this kid's storyline is the fact that he's small. Matt Frewer is quite tall. I'd say he's well over six feet tall, whereas this kid looks to be like five six five seven maybe, Like I was like, how tall is this kid?

Actually? I looked it up and the Internet was like, he's five eleven.

I'm like, he's not five eleven, or else he had a growth spurt after Honey, I shrunk the kids.

One of those two things is true. That kid is not five eleven.

Anyway, Russell is very excited about this fishing trip that they have planned. It's gonna be great. Russ, who just woke up, is like completely dead eyed, closes the door in his father's face basically, and May tells Russell that, look, he was cut from the football team yesterday, and Russell can't believe it. How could his kid have been cut from the football team. Look, if this movie is made today, Russ is a gay kid.

Like Oh, to be clear, the actor who plays Russ looks like all the members of Duran. Duran. Russ looks like if Wham was American and one hundred percent straight. That is what that kid looks like.

Yeah, the feather on the hair.

Google Duran Duran. I'm not kidding. He could run away with Duran Duran. They would not even notice.

Yeah, but it's a Disney movie. B it's in nineteen eighty nine, like they they He's just not into fishing and sports and outdoorsy stuff.

He's a more sensitive soul.

It's not even like he's an artist, Like, you know, I expected him to be like I want to draw or paint or whatever, but that's not even it. He's just like, I'm just not into that. I don't know what I'm into.

Man.

Yeah, it might be boys, or they would have.

Made him smart or something instead, like maybe I just want to read all day? Is that a problem for you, dude?

Watch is the toxic Mail tries to interact with his faggy son.

He's bewildered.

Behold as this dinosaur from the fifties is rebuffed by a new wave icon no only.

As Russ Russ.

We cut back to the Zelenski's. They're having breakfast because Amy burnt the breakfast because she's not perfect, guys, right, she wants to be, but she's not.

She's better than any of us.

To be, she's better than all of us, yea combined. Nick sneaks a little Debbie oatmeal cream pie to avoid the burnt toast, so he has a little box of cream pies under the table. Oh my god, did this make me want to eat a little Debbie oatmeal cream pie.

I don't think I've ever had one.

Those are good, Okay, I mean, well, my memory of it might be better than the actuality. The kid I used to babysit when I was a kid had like their family stocked him and so they were like, you can eat whatever you want. I was like, basically there for the food.

Yeah.

Amy asks Wayne about the conference that he has to go to that day, you know, a Saturday conference.

Saturday conference that happens.

Which causes Wayne to realize, oh my god, I'm late, and he runs around into tizzy. Meanwhile, his wife, Diane played by Marcia Strasman, calls the house. She's where She's still her at her parents' house. She's at her the grandparents house. She calls to check in. She wishes Wayne good luck. There seems to be absolutely no animosity between these two.

Correct.

Wayne promises that if this presentation goes, well, everything will change for them.

Yeah.

She tells him that she has a house to show she's a real to her and she'll they'll talk that afternoon. When she's finished, they hang up the phone. He tells the kids to clean up the place, so he tells Nick to mow the lawn and Amy he looks. He looks around the house and he's like, good luck. Only Rick Miranas can make this work. It's so sweet coming from him. He just he genuinely means good luck. He said, I'm so sorry I have saddled you with all the

Nick is not interested in doing the work. He doesn't want to mow the lawn. Frankly, I don't know that you should send your eight year old to mow the lawn regardles. It feels unsafe. But we don't have time to dwell on that.

I have thoughts about this scene continue.

He brings his friend Tommy over to bamboozle Tommy into doing it. Tommy, they walk around the house. Tommy is on a skateboard. This kid is skateboarding with the confidence of me on a skateboard right now today, like he is. Tommy is obviously reluctant to just do the chores until Nick shows him that like the mower is a remote control like robot rumba kind of thing that Wayne has set up, and then Tommy's excited to basically play with

Good for Nick. I love the moxie. I love that he manipulated some. I don't think these two are friends. I think it's a random neighbor kid.

Also possible. Yeah, he looks a bit older.

Yeah, he's older. He's obviously cool. Paul, He's on a skateboard.

Right, he's inching down the sidewalk on a skateboard.

He's obviously a cool kid, whereas Nick is a dork. Yeah, and so I love that Nick is manipulating another kid into doing his work. Excellent. No, no, its not only did he manipulate the kid, He's like, I'll let you do it if you want, and the kid's like really, and he's like for a box of cookies. He is that kid is paying Nick for the privilege of doing Nicked chores excellent.

Yep.

Meanwhile, back at the Thompson's, Big Russell is preparing for the camping trip. He is packing for a month long journey into the wilderness. This is a weekend getaway.

I will say. He has two teen boys with him.

Oh maybe I'm unaware of how much they can eat.

They go through cycles and there are because I cook for my nephews, and there are times where I'm like, I have to make like eight pounds of chicken, and I may not have enough, or I may have six pounds of chicken left over. There's like no telling. You don't know where they're gonna hit. Yeah, but when they hit, they go hard.

They gord. Yeah, he is, he is, He is packing enough food to feed Like the Donner Party during.

That Peruvian soccer team would not have had to resort to cannibalism if they had Russell packing the plane.

It was a Odawaian rugby team.

Get your fast straight ball more misinformation on this podcast, Son of a bit.

They went down in Peru, Is that right?

No, they went down and well over the Andies. Actually I'm not sure exactly where in Peru. You're thinking of the Chilean miners.

Perhaps, what's the difference. They're all from the Southern Hemisphere.

Diffriend countries down there, Paul, come on, man, be better. So, while Russell's preparing for the trip and poor Ron is doing everything he can to get his dad's attention. Yeah, Russ lounges around the yard reading a magazine.

Listening to it, reading a tiger beat, listening to Madonna.

Ron asks both of them to play baseball. He's like, hey, dad, want to play baseball with me? You want to play catch? And the old man's like, who are you again? Yeah, oh right, my other son.

No, despare no, thank you, Ah.

Move away, Prince Harry. I want nothing to do with you. And then he goes to his older brother and he's like, do you want to play baseball? And the older brother he was like, with these.

Hands, I just moisturized.

He's like, look, I gotta play keyboards for Oingo Boingo tonight. I can't be I can't be doing this.

Yeah.

So Ron dejected, seeking some form of communication in this world that is slowly closing in on him as the loneliness, the crushing weight of loneliness slowly closes in on him.

As the toxic masculinity starts to seep into his bones.

He walks over to the fence and he goes, hey, Nick, you're weird. And Nick, to his credit, is not an easy target even though he looks like an easy target. He's a little kid in giant glasses wearing a lab coat, like truly an easy target. And He's like, shut up, I'm better than you, and Ron's like, no, you're not. He's like, yeah, I am, and then they kind of shout at each other a little bit, but so there's an antagonism between these boys.

Yeah.

Russell then shouts at his kids to shut up and help him get for the trip, and both boys snap to it.

We cut back to the Zelenski's where Amy is starting her Cinderella length laundry list of chores. She starts mopping the kitchen. She turns on some music and she can't stop herself from starting to dance along with the music. She has like the mop. She's dancing with it as if it's her partner or whatever. I gotta say, just point of order. If you're gonna dance with the mop, don't get it wet first. You want to answer the dry mop.

There is mop jews all over that girl's face. It's not at the end of this dance routine. I don't like it.

I don't like it at all. I do like the dance routine. Amy O'Neil does a good job, but it's very charming.

It's so charming.

Outside, Russ is getting ready for the trip with his dad. He spots her through the window. He is clearly smitting.

You know that emoji of a kitten with the hard eyes. This is Russ right now, staring at her through the window.

He is hungry, like the wolf, but like a nice wolf.

Yeah, a very sweet wof very sweet wolf.

Russell also sees her dancing and he comments weird family, echoing her comment from earlier. Right, and then Russell sees Russ looking at Amy, probably feels an enormous wave of relief that his son's not like, you know, oo funny as they might say, and he decides the best way to get his son more interested in football would be to get him lifting weights.

So I just want to pause here real quick, because you're absolutely right. One of a couple of things could have happened here. There could have been like a moment of relief that his like otherwise unathletic son is at least into girls. But the movie, even though we're joking about it, the movie does not go there.

Agreed one hundred percent.

He's actually more annoyed that if the Russ is gonna date anyone, it's gonna be one of the weird o Zelensky's ah crap.

So Russell brings Russ into the garage and he's like, hey, when I was in high school, my coach got me started on these weights and I grew, and you'll be able to tackle people blah blah blah. And Russ is like, I'm not interested in lifting weights. I'm not interested in football. I don't know what I'm interested in, but it's not that. And Russell is like, look, it's that until you come up with something different, because you got to be interested

I mean, Russ seems to be interested in eyeliner, right.

Very interested in eyeliner.

To the fair that actor is not wearing eyeliner or mascara. To my knowledge, those eyes are beautiful.

They're popping.

Oh my god, you know who. He looks like he's smaller than this, but he looks like the Prince from Beauty and the Beast after he becomes the prince. Yes, with that like kind of like big nose but sexy like it works.

One hundred percent, one hundred percent. Yes, that's it. With Dart with brown hair, yes.

Yeah, and an unfortunate mullet, but that's not that's not his fault. We cannot fault him for the mullet anymore than we can fall any of them for their outfits. That they are doing their best.

The outfits are roof, we're not even dwelling on them. Uh So Russell leaves. He tries to have a stress cigarette only for before he can even light it, May's like, I hope you're not smoking and just spits it out of his mouth.

This was one of my biggest last very funny, the way the actor just puts it in his mouth and and like pops it right back out. It's excellent.

Ron appears and after Russell hears him express excitement for the fishing trip, he laments to May that Russ isn't more like Ron.

That's not good man, don't compare your sons again.

I thought the movie was going to do the like expected thing of having Ron over hear this and leah blah blah, No that doesn't happen. He's just basically like expressing how out of touch he is with his own kids. There is a kid there who is begging for his attention and his approval, and he's just simply not giving it to him.

And we should say, like Matt Freuer, who's playing Russell, he's doing, he's like he sounds awful even as we describe him, because he's he's very like eighties dad, right, like not really he is awful. Yeah, But every time Matt Freuer does one of these things, he either makes it funny so you can laugh at him doing it, or directly afterwards he like turns away and you do see this little moment of vulnerability of him being like, I'm trying to reach out to my kids and I

A lot of it.

Yeah. Well, also they're like the way it's not just the Christine Sutherland performance, but the way May is written is she's so much smarter than everyone in that house, and she's so like in tune with them, and she knows exactly what they need, and she knows how to like de escalate every situation with her husband, and there seems to be some real genuine love and affection between those two. Why there is, I don't know why anyone

Lab yep Ron tries to make a run for it.

He does what any of us would have done it twelve years old and be like, whop wasn't mine and tries to leave. But Russ, who has the heart of a Benjamin Franklin Rodriguez, has seen the whole thing and tells him, look, you have to report what happened. Russ is a very strong moral center. He brings him over to the Zelenski house and Amy and Nick answered the door. There's immediately tension between the two groups. Nick and Ron we already no, don't like each other, and Amy is

We cut to Wayne at his presentation Saturday presentation the Saturday presentation with a bunch of aeronautical engineers. Yep, you know that thing that happens all the time. It's not going well. He's trying to basically sell the idea of a shrink ray that would shrink matter so that, like in theory, would actually like save the planet because you could you could move things from one location to another with minimal effort and minimal use of oil and fossil fuels.

Lot easier if only it was possible.

The audience for his presentation is let's just say not into it. And there's one guy who's a full fucking heckler. I call him Professor Dickhead accurate, and he's just like basically like, boom, you have a shrink ray that actually works. And Wayne stumbles and he's like, well, Einstein's theories were just this theory before someone else made an atom bomb out of them. And he's like, oh, so you think you're Einstein. And I'm like, you're asking the wrong question.

The Adam ball, right, That's where the metaphor breaks down.

That's where the metaphor breaks down, not oh you think you're as good as Einstein. And then Professor Dickhead gets up and he goes, ladies, gentlemen, I'm going to lunch. I don't know what the rest of you are doing. And I'm like, well, at least he acknowledged the women at this conference.

He did.

Kudos to your professor Dickhead.

He did get one good burden when he's like, the only thing you've shrunk in here is the size of your audience.

And I was like, damn sick burn man.

So we cut back to the Zelenski house.

Amy and Russ decide the two younger boys have been upstairs for an automount of time they had upstairs, and wouldn't you just know it? They immediately get hit by the shrink gray themselves. The two of them are confused at their new size because now we follow them right now we see them on like massive built sets obviously that are meant to look like floorboards and stuff. Their younger siblings are running towards them across the floor. They

Size of an ant. What the fuck are we going to do?

The way I would have just immediately started crying. Yeah, just sat down and cried and been like unconsolable.

And honestly, scientists, if you're in a situation where you genuinely think you can crack the code to make a shrink ray, the first thing you need to do is prepare some protocol in case of an accidental shrinking.

Put a safety on that goddamn machine.

And if you get shrunk down, there is a red button it right here. You get here and you hit this button. There's buttons everywhere and down this room because you will be either a quarter of an inch tall or potentially microscopic, So it's gonna take you a while to cross the room.

Yeah, it's gonna take a year.

No, they're just they're like, okay, we have to find dad. They're pretty chill about the entire thing.

So Wayne arrives back home, dejected, sad from the conference. He's been laughed out of town by fellow scientists. So there was a little moment earlier where Quirk sees the kids, or hears them rather, and knows they've been shrunked down. So the dog is aware of what's happening before any other adult in this movie is.

For a long time. The dog is the only one in the know.

So they're like, Cork, go get dad. And then we get to watch as this Jack Russell terrier hops down the stairs because its legs are too short and it can't go down the stairs. And oh my god, Paul I rewound and watched it four times. It was so cute. So Cork gets around Wayne, starts barking and kind of leads Wayne upstairs. Meanwhile, the shrink ray moves in a way that the baseball rolls off of it and it shuts down. Wayne enters. His kids are screaming for him

Can you imagine Rick Morani is like standing in the middle of Honey the Kids and being like, motherfucker.

If Rick moranis was given that Steve Martin Seine transplasis.

Where the fucking fuck is my fucking couch?

Fuck kids, I should have pulled out when I had the chance. The kids fear all of it or worse. As you're sitting on the couch, He's like, oh no, the couch. My kids were conceived.

One of the off the couch.

I'll never be clean again. He looks at the shrink ray. He has had it. He has had a terrible, no good, bad day. He has blown up his whole life, his whole marriage for this goddamn invention that will not work. He has a full temper tantrum. He starts beating the shit out of the machine, tearing it up.

The men in this movie really need a better way to deal with their emotions.

I have to be honest, though, Paul. The amount of times I've I have come so close to throwing a computer out the window.

It's true.

The amount of times I have actually, like, you know, that thing when you kind of smack a printer to kind of get it to work, but then you get more and more aggressive with it, and now you're like, well, now I'm.

Just bitting the printer, banking this thing.

The amount of times I've wanted to do that scene in office space where they take the fax machine out back and beat the shit out of it, I understand his frustration. I really really do.

It's so funny. My reaction to the moments like that is to start crying.

You take it out yourself.

Yeah, I become so like.

I don't think I beat up on myself that much generally in my everyday life, but that is the thing that will get me. If a piece of technology stops working and I think that I fucked it up, I get down on myself really fast.

Obody, That's so funny because I'm the complete opposite. I beat myself up over every little thing in my life. But if the printer takes two seconds longer then I think it should to print something. I'm like, Tina, get me the axe. You are.

You are much healthier this that I am, because I should not play myself.

At it with wire hangers like it has wronged me so okay, so he's beating the shrink ray. He's taking all his frustrations out on it. Pieces of it are flying everywhere, and of course these giant pieces are like Indiana Jones boulders to these kids. So they're trying to run out of the way, trying not to die, try

The one thing about this movie that I remember is that shot of the POV from inside the trash bag of Rick Moranas's face as he closes it. Well, really that for some reason, I think when I was a kid, it scared me a little bit. Like, not to be fair, I know I was a very soft boy. I'm very open about that. I don't think I was scared watching this movie. I think I understood what I was watching for the most part, but like it was, it's a little creepy, like to see like like that blackness like

Honestly, honest part of me was like, how do they not? How did they just let go the broom bristles and get anyway? Moving on?

Yeah, So the kids, they are in the backyard in the trash bag. They cut a hole in the bag and they look out at the now very intimidating jungle of the Zelensky backyard.

There's a runner in the movie that they never mow their lawn. The grass blades are incredibly high for these kids. By the way, you say the kids, it's Ron. Look, I'm being nice to Ron because I love the actor that plays him, But Ron sucks. He is going to start to suk so hard for the rest of the movie until he doesn't, and at one point I'm like, shut up, ron, I like yell at the TV watching it fair. But that is a kid you want in this situation like this because he carries a Swiss Army knife.

Kids, despite their differences, they decide they should stick together and they strike out into the lawn to try to get home, and Nick calculates that at their current size, they are the equivalent of three point two miles from the house. Okay, Now, look, three point two miles is not a short distance, but it's also not that long of a distance if we're talking relatively three point two miles for them. They are young, they are strong, they

Honestly, yeah, yeah, I didn't think about it until this moment. Also, given their size, they are not three point two miles, They're thirty miles from the house.

It's way further.

It's way further. Yeah, you're right. The math isn't.

Mathing at all, and we are not good at math. So if we're noticing it's not mathing. It's really not mathing.

It's really not mathing. Diane, the mom, the Zelensky's mom, it' Zelensky kid's mom arrives back at the house. She has made that sale. She's been trying to sell this mansion in that house, in that neighborhood for so long. She had to show it twelve different times to that family. But that Gummitt, she finally made her sale. Yes, so she is.

She will sell this house today.

She will sell this house today. She's she comes home. She's sympathetic to Wayne's. Like Paul here writes failure out of a failure, he's just misunderstood in his own lifetime.

I just meant his failure at the lab if presentation was a failure he was hoping to get a grant.

That failure.

Yeah, yeah, I don't mean he himself is a failure forever harsh.

Paul Way Harsh, Paul Way Harsh. That's another documentary. That's one narrated by like Julia Roberts, which he's like the struggle of the working class man as he tries to find a grant. But his genius will not be discovered today.

Will it be discovered tomorrow? Only time will tell. As we look at the story of the late great Wayne Lensky.

Alrip wayne' alrp. Yeah, he one hundred percent blows himself up with his next invention.

Absolutely no, he blows his kid up with his next invention, but he explodes himself at some point along the way.

One percent explodes himself five minutes after this movie is over. So Diane's very sympathetic to Wayne. You would not think these two had had any kind of marital spat at all. The movie elives it completely by the way. Diane's level of empathy, trust, and understanding in her husband and the situation these people are about to find themselves in is superhuman.

It's superhuman.

She will not lose her temper once. Yeah, I don't want to assign blame here. The shrink row does seem like a very good idea once you realize the practical applications of it. But I mean, an easy thing to do would be for the screenwriters to make her pissed off half the movie, and that's just not where this movie goes. Wayne dejectedly tells her he's gonna try to get his old job back and he promises her things

Shrink ray ray, which if you could use it to shrink cancer cancer cells.

Oh my god, that's a great application for a shrink ray. You guys, someone out there needs to invent a shrink ray.

Is anyone on this? Is anyone on this?

So he tells her he's gonna get his old job back. Thinks you're gonna go back to the way they were. She goes inside meanwhile sees that the house is still a disaster, and she's like, I thought Amy was going to clean the house.

Yeah.

This is when she starts to realize, huh, the kids aren't around. Where are they?

Uh? So we cut back to the kids. They're hiking through the yard.

They're being frightened by like a relatively enormous butterfly or an old t Rex toy of Nicks. It's all kind of light at this point.

There's one thing I actually love about this movie too. Russ is not the brave one. Amy is the brave one. I'm not trying to assign masculinity to this. I'm just saying Russ is skittish. He sees the dinosaur toy and hooks like a horse. His brain goes down, and the rest of them are all like it's a toy, and like Amy kind of good naturedly laughs at him. I'm just saying I see a lot of myself and Russ, because I would have turned around and been.

Like, yeah, oh yeah, me too. Fuck that kill a fire.

I do love that they assigned that role to Russ. And it's not to say he's not brave. He's very brave, and he's very brave thinks throughout the movie, but he is relatively skittish compared to the other kids. Yeah, and I love that about this movie totally.

They eventually come across a muddy rivulet cutting through the yard that to them is a mighty river. Nick has a moment of inspiration if they summon Quark by whistling, they can hitch a ride back to the house on him. So they all start whistling, except for Russ, who was really taking some l's Like I know, I do appreciate the fact that he's skittish. You're totally right to point it out. But it's also like Russ can't whistle. I'm like, what can Russ do?

What?

We will find out eventually, but like he's being piled out a little. It feels unnecessary at this point by the movie. Why can't the kid come on?

Now?

Quark hears them, but unfortunately the door is closed, so even though he knows they're whistling for him, he can't get to them.

Meanwhile, Diane, remember in Big how we were like Josh's mom is living in a horror movie, but the rest of them are not in this is Diane my an starts calling around to Amy's friends to see if she can figure out where her daughter is or where her son is. Meanwhile, Wayne lets Quirk out, so now the dog is outside. The boys decide to climb a flower so they can see over the grass. They get just high enough to witness Spike the Thompson's cat chase Quark back into the house.

Did you hear this is a throwaway line from from Ron.

He's like, it's Russ's cat, and I'm like, we're really like, pily God, this poor soft boy like Russ gets his back, but like the fact, like it's it's always sad to watch kids bullying other kids, but there is something exceptionally sad about watching a little sibling like just getting the best of their older sibling constantly. A ron's basically like Guyliner over here is the one who wants that pet.

This little bitch is the one who's like, I need a pet, a cat like a girl.

So the flower starts to sway, and eventually it dumps Nick into another nearby flower, covering him with pollen. And this is where I must point out that Nick is now sitting in a flower's nutsack.

And he is covered with sperm cells.

Not since Casper have this many sperm cells been featured in a children's movie.

I'm not even allergic to pollen, but this scene made me itch watch poor boy fall into a sea of pollen. I was like, ah, I hate everything about this.

I am allergic to pollen, and I did not care for it.

No.

Also, the way obviously they have to make the pollen, you know, bigger, and it kind of looks like movie popcorn that's covering him, And it also made me feel sticky.

I didn't care.

I don't care for any of this. Yeah, many care for this, this flower jizzy all over the kid. Actually, truly, the kid landed in the flower jizz.

If we're being yeah, if we're being fair, if the jizz was there first.

If we're being scientific, which we always are here on that aged, well.

If the math is not mathing, the science has to at least science, and that's what we are watchdogs for. So Amy's like, oh my god, you're allergic. Amy is such a good big sister. We haven't highlighted this yet. She is constantly looking out for her younger brother. She never she's never annoyed with him, She is never mean to him. She is always on his side.

She keeps her eye on him all the time. She protects him as best she can. When he climbs that flower, she is terrified. She'd be careful, Please don't fall, Please don't fall. Like she's such a good surrogate mom to this kid.

Yeah.

While while he's lying in the flower jiz, a bee appears to do what bees do, which is pollinate.

Grab the jizz and spread it around.

And spread it around to all the ovum in the yard. That's what they do so, Amy starts to freak out she's still on the ground, and Russ jumps to try to help Nick. The two of them wind up pitching a ride on the bee. The bee flies all over both of the yards and encounters russell An encounters this and that. It finally culminates in Wayne trying to kill it with a bat. He misses, and then he looks at the bat and he's like, wait a minute, why

It is open.

You just have to reach in, take out four papers, smile, don't be fucking weird and hand these people that are giving us the money to support the family that you do not support their escrow papers.

Can you handle that? Wayne? And Wayne like, yeah, obviously.

She should never have said don't be weird. That is a that's a bar he can't clear. I'm sorry. Don't ask, Spaceline, don't ask for the impossible, Diane. The b scene is featured very prominently in the Epcot Center ride.

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

This is the part of the movie that I was like, I remember all of this vividly. Why do I feel like I'm writing this Bee? And then I'm like, wait a minute. The ride this is our first example of Russ being extremely brave, and he's not doing it to impress Amy. He's just doing it because he's a good guy. He manages to keep Nick alive.

Right.

If Amy was a lesser character, we would be talking about Russ being a great kid. Russ is also a great kid.

Percent. Russ is an excellent kid. Russ is a top ten kid. Yeah, he is simply not a top five kid. The way he's not top five, He's had a top three kid. Frankly, the way Amy is I think agreed the B thing, by the way, the amount of times these boys should be dead, I know, or the Bee could have just gone and gone and gone like two, like three miles three actual human adult miles away.

Yeah, now, you're dead.

Yeah, now you're never getting home.

Yep.

So okay, Wayne, like Paul says, looks at the bat, looks at the hole in the attic window, puts two and two together, starts realizing what happened. He heads back upstairs, and when he enters the lab, he hears a small switch. He looks down to see that he has stepped on his lab chair. Remember, there's a couch and a chair, both have shrunk down.

There's the couch that the kids were conceived on. There's also a chair.

There's a chair that just there was some sex, but but no conception was had on that chair.

They had it as a swing.

That's just their weekend chair. Anyway, Moving on, he realizes he stepped on the chair. He looks down, he finds his little, tiny, shrunken couch, and then he realizes, oh my god, my shrink ray works, My shrink ray works. And then he's so excited, he's so happy, and then he's like, oh no.

Oh shit, the kids are gone.

This would have been another great place for Rick Morani's motherfucker. All right, kids. That is halfway through the movie. Stick around for a couple of commercials.

We will be right back, and we're back.

I hope you enjoyed those shrink ray commercials we bought. We bought a lot of shrink Ray ads, you guys, we did. We gotta we gotta start. We gotta start pimpande shrink Race.

All right.

So we cut to Russ waking up Nick after the flight of the Bumblebee. They're they're both okay, but they have obviously been separated from Amy and Ron. We cut to Amy and Ron, and the partnership here is not going so well because Ron, while you want him on this trip with you on the snow Safari, he's a dick.

He's the worst. He's a mini bee of his dad.

Yes, without without the mitigating factors of seeing the haunted look in Matt Frewer's eyes every time he turns away from one of his sons, without seeing the deep insecurity that Matt Freuer allows us to see.

This is the moment in the movie, though, where I truly became team Amy, like I was already team Amy, but like the way she doesn't back down from this fucking little kid being a dick to her, but also has like patience for him because she is older and she knows better. Truly A plus A plus work from Amy. There's also some good sick burns in this scene, because these two know a sick fucking burn when they hear one.

Damn.

That's just some good burns.

Yeah. So they're going back and forth.

Ron is like, I'm gonna sue your father, blah blah blah, and Amy's finally like, hey, guess what my father's shrink ray works. If we survive this and get back, we're gonna be rich as fuck. And Ron's like, I've always liked you always, I've always felt the connection.

This is where you need a kid actor as good as your ed Russian.

Yeah.

So Wayne makes the bewildering choice of using two crutches and a pair of binoculars to search the yard. The movie goes so quickly on this. I love it.

He's also not calling for them, which is bewildering.

So this you mentioned this earlier, like that he can't hear them but they would be able to hear him.

Like loud, loud, Yes, the voice of God.

I hope the voice of God is Rick moranis Frankly, honestly, we should all be so lucky.

Is at one point barks at them and they're like, and they're all like, ah, it's so loud, and so you expect that to come back, but it doesn't. And the parents do at some points like yell for the kids in the yard and like they should be. The movie posits that the kids don't hear them at all. It's not like they even hear them in the distance. I guess sound waves can't can't travel through grass that tall. Maybe this is why you need to mow your lawns.

Yes.

So while he's like looking for them through the yard, he accidentally sets the sprinklers off through a series of hijinks I can't even get into, which means that now for the kids, it's like a tsunami and a flash flood all at once, because now like enormous waves of water are coming towards them and flooding the yard. Both groups of kids flee through the landscape, while Wayne winds up tangled in a clothes line because again he's trying

Are those scrot time.

They see Wayne like still kind of wearing a pair of crutches, clinging to a clothes line upside down with binocular glasses going, don't step on the yard. Don't step on the yard.

He made it weird. He wasn't able to not be weird. You were right.

She shouldn't have asked, he made it weird. Yeah, So Amy and Ron make it to higher ground. They get to this like kind of slate like rock formation that Amy's later gonna say is like the headstone, not the headstone, the flagstone or the flagstone.

In the yard.

They spot Russ and Nick running towards them. They start crying for them. Amy's crying for her brother, and she kind of gets out too far on the ledge and a droplet of water lands behind her and it knocks her over into a pool of water and she passes out.

Oh it's not water.

She lands in oh, I was trying to be nice. It's mud.

This part is go gross sludge. This is the part of the movie. I remembered, okay with that at Walt disney World attraction, having to remind me.

I was gonna say, did they dump in a swamp at Walt Disney World, But it sounds like, no, they.

Didn't do that.

It's Orlando. We're already, We're already.

It would be repetitive, redundant. So Russ dives in after her. He manages to get her out of the water, and he performs CPR, and he manages to basically essentially save Amy's life. He also, and this is important, he's been underwater, so the aggressive feathering of his mullet has been briefly tamed. And boyd does that face pop without that hair.

She does not cough up water. She coughs up like a groopy, greenish brown. That poor actress. Yeah, she had to hold whatever that was in her mouth until she could manage to turn around and cough it up.

Yep, that's a that's why she quit acting that. See.

Yeah, she's like, I can't act anymore. B that poor woman, that actress is clearly breathing before he does on her. This is also the moment where Amy finally sees Russ. Yeah he's a good looking boy who lived next door the whole time. Who knew.

Yeah, his name is Rio and he dances in the sane.

I am hungry like the wolf. Like we cut to Wayne. Now. Now his whole thing is he's rigged up like a Pulley system in the yard using using the clothesline and on He's on one side he's being held up by I think a hammock and on the other side he's just piled on another hammock with household items with like a TV and a toaster, and he's like combing through the arcs, going kids, kids, are you here? Can you hear me? Can you see me?

Papa? Can you see me?

If you're ever lost, I'm just going to play some son time and you'll find your way home.

That's right.

Don't leave breadcrumbs for Paul leaves Sondheim out.

It's the best for me.

Meanwhile, Russell is now deeply disappointed to have missed his departure time with his fishing buddies because of their stupid missing children. They are so grounded. In his defense, he has no idea anything's gone awry. He just thinks that his boys are pissed at him for forcing them to go on a camping trip or a fishing trip, that they've decided to act out and leave.

Yeah.

I have to say we've said this on this podcast a few times. I was a very good boy growing up. If my parents had attempted to force me to go on a fishing and camping trip, I might have run away. I may have actually headed for the hills.

I don't think so. I think you would have gone on that trip. You would have brought some books, you would have read by the campfire. You would have had a great time.

I would have been pissed. Let me tell you something. If I wanted to go camping, I could have got out into the fucking backyard and set up a goddamn tent there the.

Way Ron does in this movie.

Yeah, no camping.

They have a cabin though, and at one point the mom is packing golf clubs, so they're going to a fancy place.

They're going glamping, glamping. I may have been considered.

I would trying to.

Get a handle on your childhood and I can't figure it out. Worry out doorsy or not, Paul.

I was outdoorsy by location, but never by choice.

But like, if you weren't read, if you weren't watching TV, what were you doing?

Oh I was forced to go outside and play. It's wasn'thappy about it. Or I was reading a book. I was reading comic books and novels. I did a lot of reading as a kid.

I did a lot of reading as a kid too. Indoors by the pool.

Just to get us back to the movie for a second, when these two fishes, so Russell's friends, it's this couple show up to go on the fishing trip with them. Did you not immediately think is that somehow not Arles Howard and Carol Kine?

They are?

It is an Arles Howard and Carol Caine knockoff.

One hundred percent. I've actually seen that actress, both of them.

I've seen both of them in other places.

Totally a lot of stuff. Yeah, but I've seen her. She's very memorable. She yet exactly Carol Caine, like that's what she is.

Yeah.

They are also put in the movie to show Russell not being such a bad guy, because that guy sucks so hard. Yeah, his wife tries to talk to him, and he's like, shut up, woman, A man is talking like I'm not even exaggerating. He basically says that, and I'm like, oh okay. So in his circle of friends, Russell is like the like the good guy. Okay, okay,

Heard, nothing like blaming your wife's diarrhea for having to cancel a trip.

Oh you think it's diarrhea?

Diarrhea? What else would it be?

Menstrual stuff? Oh?

Yours is better.

That's why he whispers it yeah. And that's why the other guy does like is like, ohh, I don't want to talk about this. Our women are vampires.

I forget now, see just that I am I am a I am an evolved man. I don't mind talking about a menstrual cycle. We can talk about one right now. Talk can bother me in the slightest I bot tampons from a friend's.

Look at you, mister man of the women people. That's right, Well, I'm on day two if you want to talk about it. Feel it's currently day two leaky.

Can I breathe some tea?

I know I don't need tea. I feel fine. I'm just leaking, actively leaking while we're talking. I'm passing a giant blood clot as we're talking right now.

And that's beautiful. Your body is beautiful.

It's falling out of my uterine lining.

Your uterine lining is lovely.

Making its way outside of my body.

All right, So we cut back to the kids. They're trying to clean themselves off. Amy genuinely thanks Russ for saving her and Nick. Russ's hair is somehow feathered again. Was hair spray in the eighties so strong that you could fully wet your hair and it would return to its feathered state.

It's honestly responsible for global warming.

It really truly is.

The Awkwinet Corporation, while doing a solid for for our looks, really really fucks the earth.

Amy walks over to Ron.

Remember the two of them were bickering, and she proposes a truce and he agrees, and she shakes his hand with an enormous pile of like disgusting goo in hers and kind of like smiles like, ah, gotcha, and and he kind of smiles back. They figure they're about halfway home, and they head off again through the lawn.

They start to comment about how hungry they are. Actually they're talking about the foods they would want. I wish I'd written it down because I was like, none of you are saying pizza. I would have expected pizza.

And it's a corn dog and an ice cream sunday, I think are the two things that come up.

Honestly, the idea of like a twenty foot corn dog sounds so good to me. Oh, just bury myself inside that burrow my way through to the other side.

Like in a worm and an apple like that.

Yeah, actually sounds pretty goddamn good. Not gonna lie, all right, I love a corn dog. Apparently, just as there's like really getting hungry, they see one of Nick's oatmeal cream pies left in the yard. They start to eat. They like, grab giant handfuls of cookie and of cream, And just like my Ma Mara, Nick's the only one who does it properly where he gets both cookies and cream, yes, some others, one on top of the other and then starts to eat it because Nick is a gentleman, that's right.

So they rig up a sled and Ron rides Auntie they've named him Auntie, like a horse, while holding a bit of the cookie out in front of him on like a fishing rod to keep him moving in the right direction.

These kids are so goddamn.

Smart, innovative, innovative problem solvers. As they go they start to talk again. Amy hopes that maybe she'll still have time to go to the mall, but then with like a sideways glance at Russ, she's like, to meet my girlfriend Patty or whatever her name is. She doesn't mention this Paul character that we were talking about earlier. Yes, and Russ is like, I wrote Girls on Film about.

You, Diane. That's Amy and Nick's mom arrives home to see a police car at the Thompson's house. She takes their cue and she calls the cops because she doesn't know why the cops are there. But she's like, you know what, I should call the police. That's a really good idea. Meanwhile, back at the Thompsons, would you believe what you believe? Paul? That Russell does not communicate well with his horny.

Twist whist.

There's a funny moment here. They're showing them pictures of the kids, and as they're saying, like, our kids are happy, they're great kids, they love us, But the kids are frowning in both pictures. It's miserable, and at some point May is trying to de escalate the situation and she accidentally lets it slip that Russ wasn't cut from the football team. He quit the team, which, of course, now that's all Russell cares about, more than more than the missing kids.

All of a sudden, we cut to the Zelenski house too. Somewhat to his credit, Wayne does not waste time in telling Diane that his shrink ray works, and she's initially thrilled, and then he tells her the rest of the story as to what how he figured all of this out. The doorbell rings when the same cops show up to respond to Diane's call, because remember she called the police when she saw them at the Thompson's house, is like, good idea. Wayne is like, oh no, there must be

Get away.

The cops are like huh, and He's like everything's fine and closes the door. Not suspicious at all.

Meanwhile, the kids and Antie are getting tired. Ron's like, we need to stop. She's tired, she needs a break, she needs some food and water. They decide, actually, in a very magnanimous gesture, they should just let Antie go. They should stop like harnessing this ant. So they take the saddle, the Jerry Riggs saddle off of the ant. Ron takes the big piece of cookie that he's been using as like a carrot on a stick to guide the ant, and he gives it to Antie to eat.

Her captors, no, this is my family, now I belong with you.

The movie has made the decision. It's an giant animatronic ant. Yeah, that sh fuckingly they have somehow managed to make look adorable. Yep, because it's got giant giant eyes. I think that's what it is. You give anything big eyes, it's going to look adorable.

I think it's also the noises because it's almost like purring.

It's gizmo.

Yeah.

This movie posits that ants make the sound that Gizmo makesmlins. It's like a gurgling, like a childish gurgling and purring at the same time. So Antie just starts following them. Around as they continue their journey on foot, and Erica falls in love.

As you should, as America does.

Frankly, night falls as Diane and Wayne hunt through the yard on the scale, so they're now balancing each other on that scale contraption that Wayne set up. Russell steps outside for a cigarette and he just sees the two of them and he's so weird it out. He flicks the burnt cigarette into the Zelensky yard. The kids run into it, and the Thompson boys have a solemn moment because they think about how their father only smokes when

Not like them.

It's a sweet moment between because it's also done kind of wordlessly.

Yep.

They realize they can use the burnt cigarette to make torches so they can continue walking.

As night falls, they don't have to like just hole up immediately.

Diane says, Listen, Wayne, we got to tell the Thompson's what happens to their kids because they're worried. They're concerned and at least we know what happened, right.

Can I indrop you for one second?

Yes, because she does say that and all of this is this is basically fair, but she decides to punctuate it. But like by like they're on this, this contraption, she just pulls the release, sending each of them full body slamming into the lawn that they have they have meticulously been trying to avoid. This would have sent an earthquake to those kids that both all of them would be dead at this point if they weren't crushed.

The amount of times these kids should have, So we smash cut to the four adults in Wayne's lab. This is a very good scene because now you get Matt Frewer and Rick moranis getting to play off of each other and they're both very very funny. He's like what is this and he's like, it's a shrink ray. He's like, explain yourself. He's like, well, everything consists of both adams and empty matter. What this thing does is it correlates the small matter. And he's like, no, in real words,

Diane goes, we should have them over more often.

There is but like we were just remember we were talking about how Matt Frewer always softens like he had. They cut to the They cut to the Thompson house. He's on the phone with the police, and then afterwards May is just like gazing out into the lawn next door, and he comes over and he turns on the light and she goes, I thought you didn't believe them, and he goes, electricity's cheap. So he's like he doesn't believe them, but he like he he's leaving a light on for.

His boys just in case. Yeah.

Yeah, So we cut to the kids. They find a lego in the yard that's turned on its side, which means it provides like two sleeping compartments, because you know the bottom of the legos have those like cylindrical hollow spaces in Tokyo.

You would spend two hundred dollars a night on this.

Okay, The younger boys climb into the top bunk for lack of a better term, and then Russ is like, you take the bottom on Amy, I'll sleep on the ground, and she's like are you sure.

He's like yeah.

She's like, you think the boys will be warm enough? And he's like, yeah, they'll be fine. And then he turns around. He looks at her and he's like, will you be warm enough? And she kind of gets this like little starry eyed expression on her face and he's like, you know, this is no ordinary world, girl.

I love that you brought so much to Duram Duran backstory to this I'm living. Uh.

So we go to Diane and Wayne on the porch. Wayne says, this is all my fault. I should have been more careful. I'm sorry, and Diane says, you know, the only important thing is that we get our family back together. These two are acting now as if they've had some enormous like reconciliation that at.

One point she's like, hey, did you give those deskcrow papers people? And he's like no, and she's like that's it. Come out final Straw Camel's back broke.

Yeah, Wayne says, look there with the Thompson boys, they'll be fine, and Diane says that Amy alone in the dark with Russ is another thing that she's worried about.

Okay, there's a moving target here on Amy and Diane's relationship because at the beginning of the movie, we didn't talk about this because it doesn't matter. When she's on the phone with her mom, her mom is like, did Paul call? Did he ask you to the dance? And Amy's like, not yet, but I'm seeing him tonight, and she's like, good for you, honey, Okay, all very lovely,

Maybe she's worried that that that Russ is trash.

Baby. No one worries about Russ, that's true. No way anyone looked at that Doe eyed sweet challow May and was like he's a predator.

When I was in high school. One of my friends was not allowed to have boys over at her house except for me because her old school Italian father looked, took one look at me and was like, it's fine.

I don't know why that line stuck in my crawl. When Diane's like, I'm worried about that boy and my girl, I.

Also like, do you you think they're gonna fuck? Now?

That's a big they have.

If you'll excuse the expression bigger problems.

First of all, statistically speaking, they're dead.

Yeah, if we're gonna put money on it, they're all dead.

They died hours ago.

And if they're not dead, for God's sake, let them have a couple moments of happiness.

It's not a fucking romantic situation they're in and they're with their kid brothers also dead, dead, everyone died.

It almost feels like them trying to put this puritanical thing in the movie. That is, it's like, why would she be Of all the things she'd be worried about, that would be number I don't know, eighteen thousand. I'm on the list of like, if this was a real situation, Oh but what if she has sex?

Honestly, if she makes it back cool.

Right. So meanwhile, we cut back to Rust and Amy and they are still flirting adorably at each other. Chastley, I should mention, yeah, because this movie is a PG theory, and I don't even think it's PG. I think it's G I think it's general. I think it's really I guess.

Because it's scary to liten cigarettes.

I think, oh, the smoking so much worse than sex, so much actually, genuinely, so much worse for you than sex. So Amy asks him why he's never stopped by the house before. She's like, well, how come you never really talk to me? And he kind of shyly says that she was too popular to notice him. I'm nobody and this is probably really stupid, and then she goes, no, no, you're right, which is so good. She's like, you're absolutely right.

You can do a girl.

I'm with you too good for this world. Auntie is there to save the day. Remember Auntie is a baby ant It is so loyal and brave and noble. This creature is Anti, the best kid. Antie is the best everything. Antie for President. Antie pulls the scorpion away, and Anti and the scorpions start fighting. And now it's a little bit of a silly animatronic puppet fight, which it looks a little bit like did you ever see Land of the Loss when you were a kid? I didn't that

Okay.

Some of the kids try to run, and Ron is like, no, we got to help our friend. We got to help our friends. So they start to grab sticks and anything they could find, and they attack the scorpion. I have one of the kids, I can't remember who it might be. Russ like throws his stick like a javelin and it stabs the scorpion in its head. The scorpion does not die, and it stumbles away all like days in confused, and the kids go back to Auntie to find she it. Auntie is like, goodbye.

My friends, remember me, I deserved more than a slow death by poison.

My heroism is being unrewarded. Perhaps in the next world I will be a king and sit atop a cream pie throne.

We can hope Auntie deserves it.

Jesus Christ Paul, I was so upset last night watching this movie when that fucking aunt dies, I was crushed.

Yeah.

Ron weeps, as do we all at the death of his.

Friend, and his older brother reaches out and takes Amy's hand and he's like, I got a great idea for a song.

It's called of you to a kill. Haha. I think about I think it's all the dreador and I have on top of my head.

It's an amazing amount of durander. I'm very proud of you.

Thank you all right.

So day dawns over the Zelensky house. Wayne is hard at work repairing his shrink ray. The kids wake up. They're in the lego just as Tommy. Remember Tommy, the kid who can't skateboard from earlier, who was supposed to mow the lawn yesterday. Tommy arrives eager to get to the lawnmowing. He starts the machine and the kids feel the earth start to shake. They realize what's happening. They flee through the yard. They eventually find a wormhole to

Right.

They go through a wormhole into a wormhole in the earth. Meanwhile, Wayne and Diane hear the noise. They realize what's happening. They rush downstairs to stop Tommy, but they're afraid to step on the grass, so they're standing on the back porch yelling Tommy, Tommy. So Tommy turns around, he looks at them, and the lawnmower stops moving. It doesn't stop mowing, it stops moving.

I guess he hit an off switch.

I don't know. None of this. What's about to happen does not make sense.

The mower has unfortunately stopped directly over the wormhole entrance that the kids are now hiding in. Nick is unfortunately sucked up by the motor. Each kid grabs onto the like the one above them in this like tunnel that they're in, creating a human ladder in an attempt to save Nick from a grisly.

Vivisecting guest from being chunked like that Shark and.

Jaws from coming undone dad alas they are not strong enough and they all fly up into the blades, which don't dice them like garlic and instead just miraculously spits them out into the lawn.

I don't understand this.

I e me either, you know what. I'm not a lot mower expert. A lot of people think that about me, but I'm just not. It's not gonna move on.

I'm gonna move on. That's what happened.

I'm not gonna question this. Diane and Wayne are like, good boy, Tommy, go home, but go through the house. It's safer. And Tommy says the line of the movie, He's like weird family and then he keeps moving. Uh.

The kids kind of come to after being briefly knocked out, just in time to grab a hold of who Quark because Quark is free again and he is looking for them. They grab a hold of Quark's nosehars as he sniffs them out in the lawn. He brings them inside. Where would you believe? Erica, Wayne and Diane are having a just very normal, not at all panicked breakfast of cheerios and orange juice.

What what the fuck?

What the actual fuck?

I mean, if they had just actually decided the kids are dead, we've lost them, you have to move on, that would almost make.

Sense if Diane was making funeral arrangements. Yeah, if Wayne was trying to figure out what the fuck they're gonna tell the authorities, the insurance company, the media, frankly because four kids disappearing in the suburbs. Yeah, there's a few of these in the movie. The first one I had is when the kids decided to go to sleep for the night in the first place. I'm like, you're almost home. Keep going, you have torches, Yeah, just keep going. Why

Insane? How can you even eat?

How can you eat? Your kids have just been chunked by a fucking lawn mower.

They've been minced like an onion by your robot.

If they if they did not die twelve hours ago, yeah, they're dead now, and in the most violent her way. You know what, Cheerios.

Cheerios part of this ballad's breakfast.

This does it make any sense. But we're going.

To press on.

We're going to press on because we have to, frankly, just because we have to.

Yeah, we could stay on this for other ten minutes.

What else could these parents be doing instead of looking at instead of mourning the deaths of their children, brushing their teeth, Yeah, paying their taxes.

You're trying to have another kid, you guys, you got to replace them, right, I mean.

Oh yeah, we get upstairs, Diane. We we've got work to do. Lie back and think of the backyard, Diane.

Quark jumps onto the table and yips at Wayne's face, sending Nick falling into his bowl of cheerios.

Meanwhile, the other three kids jump off the dog, they leap onto the table, and they're screaming at Wayne to stop eating his delicious, delicious cheerios, while Nick dives under the milk to avoid being in the first light. He's trying to dive for his life. This scenario is so horrifying.

This is really dark.

This is like Titus Andronic is fucking dark dark.

Honestly too, Cheerios If I was stress eating, cheerios would not be the thing I'd be stress eating.

No, where are those fucking oatmeal cream pies.

They're having a balanced, nutritious breakfast. These two. I would be just like sheet caking. Yes, he was my last day on Earth. I'd be like, where's the emergency sheet cake time? No time for forks, Diane. I'm sheet caking and just eat it with my hands. So eventually he does get Nick onto the spoon, and Nick is screaming at his dad. Stop stop. He's like using one of the cheerios as a life raft. Stop stop, stop and quark here's all of this. He intervenes. He bites Wayne

Yeah, the sunny almost swallowed like Chronos in Greek mythology. Although at least Chronos swallowed them whole. That would have been That would have been a toothy doom.

Honestly, not the way Wayne's eaten. Swallow them down, gulp, love these cheerios.

So they realize the other kids are on the table, and we cut to the lab. We're all four adults, the Thompson's and the Zelenskis are trying to figure out how to make the shrink ray work because remember, it's not working again.

The kids manage.

To charade their way into the adults, realizing that the baseball is the key to making the shrink ray work. Honestly, this is very good charades played by the kids and a lot of stupidity from the adults. The second someone winds up and throws baseball is the absolute first thing that should come out of your mouth.

Honestly, true, like the other kids doing a bat. Yeah, I'm like, this is obviously baseball, unless you're in England, it's cricket that other than that fucking baseball.

Wayne realizes the baseball is the key to making the shrink ray work. I cannot be bothered to explain why, mostly because I genuinely don't understand the baseball is magic.

It basically, the shrink ray needs a conduit to go through before it gets to its target so that it doesn't explode the target.

Okay, but that's the.

Science this movie is telling us. Remember Paul, we're in science months.

Science mon age. Well, this is the science.

Yeah, I just want to put it like, dot all my eyes, cross all my t's and make sure everyone understands the hardcore science that is sciencing in this deeply scientific film.

If you are trying to make a shrink rate's not working, maybe try to send it through a baseball.

Just try it. Yeah, you don't know.

You're a hamster.

Yeah, why not?

So basically, the shrink ray starts to work again thanks to the magic of the baseball, and they're like, great, let's do this. Let's start let's start using it on the kids, and Wrestle's like, whoa, Okay, hang on, everything else you've tried it on has exploded. Just because you say it works doesn't mean I believe you that it works. You gotta try it on another living thing. The dog immediately pieces out of the room. Excellent, excellent. Wayne volunteers himself.

Can I just say?

Everyone in this scene is wildly underworried about potentially like being covered with ragou a la Russell. Remember how much of that app that that apple became. Yes, this would have been this would have been a this would have been a grand guen awl.

Yes, body part of epic epic proportions.

Yeah.

Also try it on one more thing. Like they went straight from exploding things to putting the baseball on the machine to Okay, let's shrink a human.

Now try another inanimate object.

One more thing, just one more please. So Wayne hits Russell. Russell, to his credit, looks properly terrified that he's about to get blown up. Wayne hits him with the shrink Ray and it works. Ray Great Russell exploded.

It's surprising endy for a Disney movie.

That was in the original in the original script, and then the studio was like, hell if we just had the aunt die.

Yeah, they were trying to sell it to A twenty four, but once Disney bought it, they had to change the end.

Ah. So not only does he get shrunk, they hit him again and he d shrinks. He grows up again into regular size Russell. They gather the kids in place. Russ asked Amy to the dance. He's like, before we get reblown up into our sizes, do you want to go to the dance with me on Friday? She says she'd love to, and they start to hold hands. Wayne d shrinks all four of the kids. There's much rejoicing. Russell even tells Russ that he is so proud of him. Good for you. Wayne and Russell shake hands.

We cut to a dinner with an enormous turkey. Okay, this turkey is a giant turkey sex doll, right, it's gross. That is a sex doll. That is a blow up turkey sex doll for freaks. And I say freaks with affection. You do you You're not hurting anybody, God speed, Get down with your bad self.

That is a sex doll.

That is a sex doll for someone who likes to fist turkeys but legally is not allowed. Yeah, it is like if only there was a turkey that was dead, so that it wasn't Peter wouldn't come after me, were already dead and also big enough for me to fist. Yeah, that's exactly it.

The adults are toasting too many more dinners together. The kids are drinking their milk, Amy and Russ play foot seat under the table, and Quark, the true hero of the film, the dog that should replace Superman's dog, should Superman's dog ever go on retirement, eats a giant milk bone under the table.

End of movie. All right, so stick around.

We will be right back after some commercials, and we'll bring you through our random observations and final rankings.

And we're back.

Erica, do you have any more little little pollen bits to sprinkle upon the listening audience?

Everything else I have is a line from the movie Oh okay, some of the lines I love, some lines I don't love. I'm gonna start with the line I.

Don't love okay.

About two thirds of the way three quarters of the way into the movie, Wayne is upstairs tinkering away on his machine, trying to fix it after the temper tantrum he threw, which no one yelled at him about. Nope, and he falls asleep. Diane comes upstairs. She looks tenderly lovingly at her husband, and she goes, I love you Wayne's Slazynski, whatever the fuck his name is. Yeah, Erica screams at the television.

Not now, Diane, I had the exact same reaction.

Why is he asleep? Yeah, I know why this is here, because according to the movie, these two have had some horrible marriage ending fights two days prior to this. That again, the rest of the movie does not address. There's not even any tension, so there's no need for her to like have a moment where she realizes that she just gosh, darn it, I just love.

My just love that man of mine, just.

Love my weirdo, mad scientist husband.

Yeah.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, and it makes her look insane.

I agree, I one hundred percent degree. So we said the end of the movie was Quark eating the milkbone, which is not exactly correct. That should have been the end of the movie, But there's a little bit of a runner where after Rusk gives Amy the artificial respiration, Nick says, where did you learn CPR? I think he calls it artificial respiration? Where do you learn artificial respiration? And he goes French class kid. That's kind of cute

Paul, Yeah, such a hard disagree.

Really, Oh my god, do you want.

To hear my notes on the greatest last line of a kid's movie ever?

Wow?

I think the kid nails it. I think the fact that the camera then like it zooms in on his face and then like blackout as soon as the kid starts to laugh. Adorable.

Okay, fair enough.

So at the beginning of the movie, after he's been shot in the head with a rubber arrow, Russell's trying to rub off the super glue off his head and just Christine Sutherland comedic assassin, walks behind him and says, you're wiping away brain cells and there aren't that many to spare Excellent.

Excellent, excellent.

I have one more joke I really liked in the movie, when the cops are there for that brief moment, there is a brief cutaway to them in the car where they realize they got another report for missing kids from the next door neighbor's house. And if you look, you can see on like the police scanner or whatever that is that the only thing that's ever been reported from the Zelensky house before is twelve counts of disturbing the piece, which I thought was excellent.

I actually fully missed that. Yeah, I just have one more. It's my favorite joke in the film, Oh okay, very Erica joke when the four adulta together and the Zelenskys are explaining what happened. Yeah, one of them accidentally says that, like everything you know, we didn't expect it to work.

Yeah, that did not happen.

We'd be we'd be wading through the Viscerara.

Don't worry.

It seems like my shrink ray actually multiplies the innards of anything. It explodes, so it would be it would be waist deep in blood and guts.

I cackled out loud when Briana said that line. I'm like, muah, perfect, Paul, how shall we rate? Honey? I shrunk them kids.

I don't shrunk the kids. How about one to ten? Flower Scrotums?

Flower drum Scrotum was a was a musical that never took off.

Never took off, but boy, boy, did they have a take.

I remember one time in my twenties someone was like having a bad sneezing attack and I'm like, we were we were in Prospect Park and I'm like, are you okay? And he's like, the trees are jizzing all over me. How about one to ten? Noble animatronic ants?

Oh so, no noble, honest true.

Auntie is almost as cute as Quirk. Not quite, but almost.

It is the cutest animatronic thing I think we've come across in this podcast.

I want to say one hundred percent no, no, no, Gizmo, Tom Cruise, I'd say, I'd say Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise, Yes, cute, He's cute.

Yeah, He's not widely known to be animatronic.

But if you know, you know, he's not widely known to be cute, but he's very cute.

How about one to ten documentaries about a toxic male and.

Now beholds as a man shrinks himself down to prove his worth to his family. Yet another act? What accent am I doing? Yet another act of heroic insignificance as we rail against in this world.

Watch now as he goes to the bathroom. You'll see how tiny his manhood is. It is from this that many of his problems stem.

You think when they blew him back up, they could have They could have given him a little extra genital maybe helped. I can we how how precise is the shrink ray?

Yeah?

Can we get can we get granular?

If it's gonna cure cancer, it needs to let.

Yeah, we're gonna need to hit We have to target cancer cells. Let's start with penal.

Yeah, yeah, first, uh huh?

How about one to ten New waves soft boys?

He is, he's such a new waves You really nailed it with that. Honestly, golf collapse for you? That is exactly right.

I thought of one. Margarine Duransong, Oh yeah, a new wave soft boy that I'm gonna save a little prayer.

For Okay, there you go, There you go. I think we should do.

This one, all right. Yeah, new wave soft boys, new.

Wave soft boys who are not wearing eyeliner or are they? No, they're not, but maybe I don't think so.

But damn honestly, someone saw this movie and was like, we've got to start marketing eyeliner to men. I know what we're wasting our time on The female market is saturated. We have got to get men on this.

So do you want to go first on this one? Or shall I go first?

Why don't you go first on this one?

All right?

I would say overall, overall, I think this film ages pretty well. There are no people of color in it.

Zero.

The characters of the movie are two four person nuclear families.

Even the dog is white.

Even the dog is white. It is that.

I think that sin of omission is the biggest sin to ascribe to it. There's no gay content in the movie. This was a Disney movie in the eighties. Shocking, blow me down.

I mean, there's almost no sexuality at all. Yeah, And I would say, although those kids do kiss, but.

They kiss, and there's a queer subtext to the Russ character that they're obviously stomping out by giving him a female love interest to a certain extent, but like there's something there, not much, but if you want to cling to some little tidbit, there's something there. But on the on the women front, I think this is good Amy. Obviously we both loved Amy in the pantheon of best Kids. Yeah,

But that's why they have Amy.

That's why, that's why they had a daughter.

These women get to have jokes, they get to have arcs, they get to be equal to the men. I'm gonna rate it pretty high. I mean, I don't find myself with much to say. Like, it's a pretty simple kids movie. I think it's effective, I think it's well done, it's fun.

I'll give it an eight.

I'm going to even an eight out of ten new wave soft boys who insert your own Duran Duran pun here, I'm out of Duran Duran songs.

I'm sorry, I don't have any more.

Maybe maybe we just do like New Order now or.

Ever get into a bizarre love triangle with people.

Who I'm gonna call my personal Jesus there are.

What do you think?

So when I started watching the movie, it took me a wild warm up, and it took me a while to warm up into the dynamics that the movie was setting up with like the women doing all the emotional labor in the houses. The movie won me over and I kind of stopped caring about it, and I kind of stopped caring about the like very gendered roles that

Yeah.

I got distracted, I think because he said ladies and gentlemen, and I was like, are there women of Like, oh, there actually are a couple of women dotted in the in this room.

Good for there are women in this scientist convention. Thank god, right, And so it was just like gentlemen, I'm leaving and he just leaves. Yeah, there is that. The movies modern enough to include that, but I'm not sure there were people of color in that scene. I can't recall any. Yeah,

I like it all.

So you know, who knows, maybe there's a grain of that in there somewhere, and I have this film to thank for it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, all right, I don't feel need to offer a palate cleanser.

Do you want to offer one?

I would almost go and like back in time and offer this as a palate cleanser to the goonies.

Oh, sure, there you go.

Yeah, but no, no palate cleanser if you have kids. Great movie.

All right.

So that's the end of our show, Erica. Everyone listening can follow us on Blue Sky, Threads and Instagram. Instagram is the one and only platform where we accept request specifically on our monthly themes. So if you want to know the themes in advance and you want to request movies on those themes, you must follow us on Instagram. We have a tea public shop, you can pick up podcast swag. You can comment on our episodes on Spotify

Show notes on this episode. You can click on it.

It will take you to rate this podcast dot com slash dot age well, and it will take you through the whole process.

That aged Well is produced and edited by Paul Kola. We would like to thank Caroline, Megan, Kelly with An I, Kelly with a Y, steph Andy, Nanette, Danielle, Sarah, Elise, Lauri, Mara, Nicole, Sophie Magge, Paula s Melissa, Delia, Allison, Sidney, Ellen k Franziella, Robina in A, Nereisa, Morgan, kay Lee, Mary, and some other names is Paul could not identify from social media. Do I get them?

I get them all?

So good. Erica you did, Miss Rebecca.

You just you were You were reading fast and you skipped right over Rebecca's name.

Thanks Rebecca, Thank you all for reaching out and letting us know what you want to hear. If you want to have a say in the topics we discussed, join our patreon. Every patron gets to vote in an exclusive monthly poll to determine one of our subjects, So head on over to patreon dot com slash that Aged Well

While it is lovely to be back amongst you fine people, I must admit my heart is heavy with the knowledge that my one true love, Cyrus the virus Grissom, has been untrue. I found the following letter in the hope chest that he keeps under his stores of Belladonna, bitter nightshade, and white oleander. My dearest Cyrus the virus. As I sit beneath this majestic oak tree, the rough bark on my back reminded me of the last time your workman's

This burning in my loins.

I've gone to the apothecary and they have assured me that there is no potion to offer me sucker.

Please, Cyrus be my sucker.

Most sincerely and truly yours, Cassie Patronix of that aged will. I know the mean poetry at my disposal could never stand up to the verse that Cassie has used on Cyrus. I suppose it's just a lonely sasparilla and ginger ale for Cameron Poe this evening Bitter night Shade.

Indeed, Wow, what a heartfelt yeah, deeply uncomfortable letter.

He's a romantic but also an oversharer.

Yeah yeah, too much information a TMI for the ages, if you will.

And I really I don't understand his obsession with Cyrus the virus. There's so many better options.

You Know what's funny is I've seen Connor a few times and for some reason right now, all the names elude me. Steve bum.

He's he is the child murderer, So maybe not him all right, Erica, any final thoughts on Honey, I.

Shrunk the kids, Honey, I shrunk the kids.

Honey, I shrunk the kids.

Honey, I shrunk the kids. What I'm sorry? Would you say, did you just tell me you shrunk the kids?

No? Why would you think that?

Why would you No?

No, not at all, I'd say that.

But bactating my cheerios watch as he puts a cigarette in his mouth for a few brief moments like that is the worst werner heads on. I just want to acknowledge I'm not even trying apologies to Germans listening