The Incredible Shrinking Woman

Year 4, Day 105 - 4/14/12 - Movie #1,104

BEFORE: Mad Science week continues - I considered watching another animated film, "The Illusionist", but I think that one concerns magic more than science, so I'll skip that one and move it to the back of the list.  This one fits more with the theme, and anyway I can link from James Caan to Ned Beatty (last heard in "Toy Story 3") since they were both in the film "1941".  

I've got to get to our tax return today - I know the due date isn't until the 17th this year, but putting it off another two days isn't going to help.  I was going to file the extension, but I think I'll save time in the long run by just buckling down this afternoon and crunching the numbers.

THE PLOT: When an ordinary woman is exposed to a unique mix of chemicals, she begins to uncontrollably physically shrink.

AFTER: I suppose this was meant to be a sort of commentary on the role of advertising and the media in our society, but I didn't really see it as effective that way.  I don't work in advertising, but I have a job that's sort of advertising-adjacent, where I have to research who's doing what in the ad game.  So maybe I'm too close to that topic.  The whole game breaks down when you see one of those old print ads from the 1950's that talks about how healthy cigarettes are, or when you realize that the average company probably spends more on advertising than it does on making sure its products are 100% safe.

I think the film is slightly more effective as a commentary on the role of chemicals in our modern world.  Pick up any product and read the ingredients, and you probably won't understand half of the words - carrageenan and xanthan gum are some of my favorites.  I remember back in the 70's, and this was sometime after the banning of DDT but before the Tylenol tamperings, when it just seemed like every new product also carried some kind of risk.

Remember Tab, the diet soda?  It contained saccharin, so every can or bottle had to have that warning label about how that caused cancer in rats.  Gee, suddenly I'm not so thirsty, and the need to lose inches off my waist is less important.  What about that gum with the refreshing liquid center, that we all "knew" somehow gave you cancer?  Maybe because gum with a minty liquid inside just seemed too good to be true somehow. What else - Pop Rocks?  Did we really pour exploding candy into our mouths, even though people said it took the life of America's beloved cereal icon, Mikey.  (P.S. it didn't)  And of course once you learn what exactly goes into making Jell-O, you may reconsider your dessert options.

It seemed like for every new product that came on the market back then, there was some form of new risk.  Ranch dressing?  And it comes from a Hidden Valley?  What exactly are they hiding over there? Of course, today we've got the debates over high-fructose corn syrups, and we've learned that supermarket beef has been cut with "pink slime", or if you're in the beef industry, "lean finely textured beef".  But come on, it's the stuff that you see in dog food that we used to call "meat by-products".  Now, that's mad science.

But, back to the film.  Lily Tomlin (last heard in another shrinking-person film, "The Ant Bully") played at least three roles here, predating anything that Eddie Murphy later did in "The Nutty Professor" films - I suppose it would have been more effective if all three women didn't look just like Lily Tomlin, that sort of spoiled the illusion.  But the main character is the women who gets a certain does of specific household chemicals and perfumes, which shrinks her body down to doll-size.

After some media attention she's a hit on the talk-show circuit, but she also comes to the attention of an evil group of scientists who want to shrink everyone.  Which seems odd, because if you shrunk everyone in the world, who would benefit?  I guess there'd be more space for everyone, and world hunger would be eliminated, since food would stay the same size.  But aside from that, I don't see the point - wouldn't we then be at the mercy of medium and large-sized animals?

Speaking of animals, there's a gorilla character here, which was obviously a man in a gorilla suit - which reminds me of a time in the 1980's that I went to an arcade (look it up, kids) in suburban Massachusetts, and appearing there was the actor who played the gorilla in "Trading Places".  (Don McLeod, according to the IMDB) He showed up in full, realistic ape costume.  I remember walking around the arcade and catching an occasional glimpse of gorilla and being startled.  I knew it was just a man in a suit, but something told me not to get too comfortable - I didn't want to train my brain to relax in that situation, just in case I ever encountered a real gorilla walking around an arcade.

I swear I would have been OK with the last half of this movie being a dream - there's a point at which our heroine goes to sleep in a doll house, and it would have been a perfect place to start a dream sequence.  No such luck.

The main problem here was the low quality of the special effects.  It looks like their total FX budget was about 12 dollars, and they blew that on the gorilla suit.  So mostly they just built a super-large version of the furniture and figured that would look real enough.  Well, technically it was real, because this film seems to predate CGI or anything beyond the occasional split-screen, when Tomlin is playing two characters in the same scene.  Films like "Innerspace" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" really put this one to shame, effects-wise.

Also starring Charles Grodin (last seen in "The Lonely Guy"), Henry Gibson (last seen in "Wedding Crashers"), John Glover, Mark Blankfield, with a cameo from Mike Douglas (the talk-show host, not the actor).

RATING: 4 out of 10 grocery bags