Honey We Shrunk Ourselves Script
Elgin Carmona
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is a 1989 American live action/animated comic science fiction film. It is the first installment of a film franchise and served as the directorial debut of Joe Johnston. The film stars Rick Moranis, Matt Frewer, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kristine Sutherland. In the film, a struggling inventor accidentally shrinks his kids, along with the three neighbors' other kids, down to the size of a quarter-inch. After being accidentally thrown out with the trash, they must work together and venture their way back through a city wilderness filled with dangerous insects and man-made hazards.
In a San Francisco neighborhood, quirky scientist and inventor Wayne Szalinski has been designing an machine capable of shrinking and growing objects, but cannot get it to work properly. His obsession with the machine worries his hardworking wife Diane and his six sons; 10-years old blonde haired daughter Amy, spolied 13-years old son Nick, black-haired 12-years old daughter Charlize, laid-back 11-years old son Max, aspiring-inventor 9-years old son Willy and youngest daughter Dana, who just haves 4-years old. Next door, Thompson's seven children; Sandra, Johan, Stephen, George, Emily, Jeffrey and Ron also do nothing while living with their parents. Altman's other seven children; Ted, Audrey, Eric, Peter, Eva, Robert and John, along Williamson's other seven children; Mike, Ethan, Olive, Donna, Jim, Alex and Emma are very curious and want to explore the world.
Shortly after Wayne leaves for a conference, Ron accidentally hits a ball through the Szalinski's attic window and into the machine, turning it on and blocking its targeting lever. The Thompson kids are recluntacy forced to confess to the Szalinski kids. The group, incluing Dana, enter the attic to retrieve the ball and clean up the mess, and the activated machine shrinks them. The Williamson and Altman kids suffer the same fate when they go searching for the others to play.
At his conference, Wayne is laughed off the stage for failing to provide proof that his machine works. He enters the attic upon returning home; the shrunken children try to get his attention, but their voices are only loud enough to be heard by the family dog, Quark. Already frustrated, Wayne discovers the broken window and snaps, repeatedly striking the machine. He sweeps the debris, along with the kids, into a trash bag. The twenty seven manage to escape, only to discover that the trash bag is now at the curb; they must make their way back home through the Szalinski's overgrown yard, but they are attacked by a group of small Fennec Foxes, leaded by Coog, who leaves them to be captured by San Francisco's Pacific Research Laboratory.
Meanwhile, the Williamson, Altman and Szalinski parents become uneasy at their children's absence. Wayne eventually pieces together what happened and eventually reveals the truth to Diane, and she joins in the search. Later, she convinces Wayne to share the information with the Thompsons, and they remain convinced.
Meanwhile, in another part of San Francisco, the kids are rescued by a male sheep named Sutton and his flock, who take them away to their headquarterers in an abandoned factory inhabited by a lot of the house's backyard's bugs. Before showing them their loyalty by a small Comodo Dragon bite starting with Dana, Sutton discovers that the kids are little humans. Seeing that they discover their cover, the Szalinski, Thompson, Williamson and Altman kids run and escape through the sewers and aboard a boat back to San Fransisco, unknowingly incinerating the Comodo Dragon. The backyard bugs go for them in a revenge search. Back at the city, the group takes shelter in a alley, while also begin to become very closer as friends.
The kids feast on one of discarded cookies, and use a crumb to capture a friendly forager ant, naming her "Antie" and riding it toward the house. As night falls, the group takes shelter in a Lego piece. The kids are later attacked by a red male scorpion, but Antie, at the cost of its own life, but succesfully preventing his stings helps them to drive the scorpion away, and the kids later take shelter in a cave. Meanwhile, Wayne, Diane and the kids' friends later encounter Sutton, who vows to kill them as well before they flee.
Next morning, after a long minute montage of the kids in the city and fleeing or hiding from San Francisco's Pacific Research Laboratory, they finally return to the neighborhood, but a car activates a poison sprinkler while spraying the yards. The kids flee from the poison spray and they are protected by some glass.
After that, the group continues their way and the Williamson and Altman kids return to their homes and parents. The Thompson and Szalinki kids visit the Thompson's house, but they learn from the resident cat Valiant that the Thompsons are on a family's trip, and they will not return until the next two months. With the broken heart, the Thompson kids accuse the Szalinski kids of trying to get rid of them, and they drive away the new homeowners, who have just returned to the house and called San Francisco's Pacific Research Laboratory. The handlers capture the Szalinski kids, but the Thompson kids interfere long enough for the Szalinski kids to escape and end up being captured instead.
Guilt-ridden, the Szalinski kids attempt to rescue the Thompson kids, but are intercepted by Sutton, who attempts to knock them. However, when his flock is captured, Sutton realizes that he and the Szalinki kids must work together to rescue them. With the help of the Williamson and Altman kids, they steer a double-decker bus into the lab van until it gets entangled in some cables on the Golden Gate Bridge, stopping traffic. The backyard bugs surround the Szalinski, Williamson, and Altman kids with intent to harm them, unaware of their new partnership with Sutton, but Szalinski saves them with the help of the Williamsons, Altmans, and Thompsons, who canceled their family journey by reggreting themselves. The van plummets into the Golden Gate River as the Szalinski, Williamson and Altman kids try to free the Thompson kids, Sutton decides to jump into the river to give them the keys to the Thompson kids' cage to go to shore and escape the van.
All the people returns to the neigborhood by a sheep-driven city bus. The families meet in the attic, and the kids use charades to inform Wayne that the ball blocked the lever, which previously overheated targets and caused them to explode. Wayne corrects the problem, and they volunteer an small ball as test subject; the test is successful, and the kids are later restored to their original sizes. Weeks later, the Szalinskis, Altmans, Williamsons and Thompsons have become good friends and are in a picnic in the park, alongside the backyard's bugs.
The project was originally brought to Walt Disney Studios by Stuart Gordon and Brian Yuzna in 1982. Gordon was hired to direct the film and Yuzna to produce. The film was written as Teeny Weenies by Stuart Gordon, Ed Naha, and Brian Yuzna. Leo Benvenuti, Steve Rudnick, Peter Barsocchini, Michael Armstrong and Tom Schulman were all later added as screenwriters, reemplazing Ed Naha, while Gordon originally prepped the film.
In 1983, Joe Johnston was selected to direct the film for his directorial debut, having been mostly working on films as an effects illustrator and art director, reemplazing Gordon when he had to drop out as director shortly before filming began due to illness, while Penny Finkleman Cox replaced Yuzna as producer. As the title Teeny Weenies seemed to appeal more to a child demographic, the name was changed to Grounded to appeal to a more mature audience. That name was later rejected in favor of The Big Backyard. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, based on a line of dialogue from the film, ultimately became its title.
Some of the film's changes weren't in the original screenplay, for example: it was placed originally in Nevanda instead of San Fransisco, the shrunked kids traveled in the backyard, the Scorpion was the main antagonist and the Golden Gate Bridge's Showdown was going to never happen. Also, instead of twenty seven shrunked kids, were supposed to be twenty eight kids, one of them, Jimmy, was supposed to die in the poison sprinkler attack, that was suppose to be in the opening. At the end, the extra kid was removed and just twenty seven kids were leaved and the changes were also putted. The film was also originally going to just be live action with character puppets. Also it was considered to be traditional animated, but it camed an live action and fastest stop-motion animated.
In 1987, before Rick Moranis was cast as Wayne Szalinski, the script was written with Chevy Chase in mind because of his popularity in National Lampoon's Vacation. He was filming the second sequel, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and was too busy to portray Wayne.
John Candy was also considered for the role of Wayne. He declined, but suggested to Johnston that his friend (and costar of SCTV, Little Shop of Horrors and Spaceballs), Rick Moranis, would be a good choice. Michelle Pfeiffer portrays Wayne's wife, Diane, who is having marital troubles with him.
Matt Frewer and Kristine Sutherland portray Edward and Mae Thompson, the Szalinskis' next door neighbors and parents of their children. Russ is very accepter of his children and can understand why they isn't more interested in masculine things such as football and fishing. He is dimwitted and clumsy and secretly takes to write when he is nervous or scared. On the other hand, Mae is a very nice person and friendly with the Szalinskis.
The filming took place in the streets of San Francisco, California. In the scene where the kids run away in the sewers, it was filmed in Pinewood Studios, and required a medium white circle with water and 50 more closer tubes in all the circle. Some scenes were filmed at the backlot of Pinewood Studios. Gregg Fonseca was the production designer and was in charge of managing several different sets for the scenes in it.
c80f0f1006