Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves - Plot

Plot

It has been years since Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) blew up his baby son, Adam, into gigantic size. Nick Szalinski, like his sister Amy, is now living away from home to college and Wayne is the president of Szalinski Labs, with his brother Gordon Szalinski (Stuart Pankin) as head of research and development. Adam (Bug Hall), now ten years old, is having trouble making his father understand that he wants to go to baseball camp instead of science camp like his father wants him to. Diane Szalinski (Eve Gordon) is having a hard time adjusting to Wayne's attempts to create new machines and raising her son. She and her sister-in-law, Patti (Robin Bartlett), are heading out of town for the weekend while Wayne and Gordon watch their kids.

While she is out of town, Diane demands that Wayne get rid of the seven-foot-tall Tiki Man sculpture that is in their hallway. He agrees, but has a better plan in mind. He decides to secretly shrink it to carry with him always instead of throwing it away, even though he was prohibited from ever using the machine again. While the kids are away buying groceries, he and Gordon bring it up to the attic where his famed shrinking machine resides. The shrinking machine has been upgraded and streamlined over the years (as it is headed for a place in the Smithsonian), and now sports a large red button to fire it. While searching for the now-shrunken Tiki Man, Wayne and Gordon are accidentally shrunk into 3/4 of an inch tall when a croquet ball accidentally rolls from a shelf and lands on the button. After forgetting to give Gordon and Patti's son Mitch (Jake Richardson) the medicine for his potassium deficiency, the women decide to drive back. When they return, they hear a sound in the attic and go up to investigate. After going in, however, the same result that befell Wayne and Gorden happens as the shrink ray starts up again and another croquet ball activates it, shrinking Diane and Patti.

Adam and his cousins, Mitch and Jenny (Allison Mack) come home to find that their parents are not there. After hearing an old message on the answering machine, they believe that their fathers are at the space shuttle launch. Diane is infuriated with Wayne's antics and they decide that they need to get their children's attention. After climbing a wicker chair, they decide to ride a fishing pole thread down from the attic window and into Adam's room. Jenny decides to throw a party with her friends in the living room, which infuriates the adults.

The shrunken adults reach Adam's room, ride on his Sharkruiser car on a Hot Wheels track, and accidentally fall into the laundry chute, landing in a basket of laundry at the bottom. The group then stumbles upon a cockroach, from which Wayne saves Diane. Jenny's friends begin to arrive, including Jill (Mila Kunis), a girl Adam is interested in. While walking around, Wayne and his family watch as Mitch begins to stumble without his medicine. The group plans to split up with Wayne and Gordon planning on rewiring the speakers to make their voices loud, while Diane and Patti look in the kitchen for Mitch's medicine. The group uses Jenny's friend's bubble machine to float down to the first floor.

While the women land safely, the men's bubble flies out of control, causing it to pop on the chandelier and land them in a bowl of onion dip. They then proceed to nearly get eaten by the girls, but thanks to sloppy eater Jill, they fall out of the bowl and are safe. Diane and Patti stumble upon a daddy long-legs caught in a spider's web. As Patti clears the web with a nail file, Diane talks to the daddy long-legs and realizes that being his size is bad enough without her trying to kill him when she is normal size. In the meantime Ricky King (Jojo Adams), Jenny's crush, comes over to the house with his friends uninvited and begin to liven things up at the party, as Wayne and Gordon try to hot-wire the speakers. Ricky steals an unwanted kiss from Jenny in the kitchen, which Diane and Patti witness. Jenny, angry at Ricky, discourages him for doing so, stating that he could've asked if she wanted to kiss him in the first place. Ricky then claims that lots of girls like the way he kisses, but Jenny retorts that she doesn't act that way regardless. She then declares then party over, which gives Patti a new judgment on her.

Adam finds Mitch very ill and goes into the kitchen to look for his pills, which Diane and Patti could not push into view. Mitch sees the mothers and faints (either from surprise, lack of potassium, or both) and needs potassium in his system to stay awake. Adam, after remembering that he found out bananas have potassium from his dad, saves Mitch by getting Jenny to feed him some. However, Ricky and his friends begin to cause havoc at the party as revenge for Jenny's discouragement, scaring Jenny's friends. Still declaring the party over, Jenny demands Ricky and his friends to leave at once, but they refuse, saying that they'll leave when they want to. Adam then tries to back up Jenny, which then prompts Ricky to bully Adam and mock Wayne's inventions. Fortunately, Wayne finally succeeds in hot-wiring the speakers, and Gordon pretends to be God, scaring Jenny and Ricky's friends into leaving the house at once. Following the departure of the guests, Gordon reveals that the adults have been shrunk and that Diane and Patti are in the kitchen, which worries Jenny. The kids find all of their parents and places them in front of the shrink ray, having set it via Wayne's instructions to change them back into normal size. After contemplating what life would be like if they leave their parents shrunk, they choose to give them a second chance and all hit the button together.

After reuniting, Wayne announces he understands Adam's interest in baseball over science, and Diane tells Wayne that she is not going to "sweat the small stuff anymore" and that he can do whatever he likes with the Tiki Man. Patti begins to trust Jenny, and Wayne decides to step down from the position of President of Szalinski Labs and get back to his true passion as a hands-on inventor, giving Gordon, who likes organizing things and is good with people, the job of President. The film's last shot reveals that Wayne has blown up the Tiki Man into tremendous size to loom over the house from the backyard.