YMMV / Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the Tiki Man sentient? Wayne attritbues a lot of the good luck he has to the Tiki Man while treating him like he's a real person and along with that, the inciting incident is to avoid Diane's demand to get rid of him by means of Wayne turning the shrinking machine back on and zapping the Tiki Man with it—which in turn gets all four adults shrunk down too. This theory is fairly feasible thanks to this along with many different things: shots focusing on the Tiki Man, the adults forced into this situation where they have to now go on a trek through the house to try to make the kids aware of the situation and working out the differences between themselves and the kids all resulting in the Tiki Man being zapped back to his original size along with the adults, Diane telling Wayne she's not gonna make him get rid of him anymore and the Tiki Man now at a maximized size towering triumphantly by the end of the movie over everything from the Szalinski's backyard.
• Contested Sequel: The fans are strongly divided between this film being the low point of the franchise with its obvious smaller budget and cheesy jokes, or a Surprisingly Improved Sequel over the previous film that returns to what everyone loved about the first film with a fun twist of Wayne finally getting a taste of his own medicine.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The Chili Volcano scene in which Adam and Mitch make stick figures out of hot dogs, then proceed to have them get covered in chili as the volcano erupts. The village people forgot to make a sacrifice - and the hot dog people must become SNACKS!
• Harsher in Hindsight: Jenny gives her crush a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about kissing her without her consent. She was right on, but years later, her actress Allison Mack was caught as an accomplice in a sex ring where she recruited women into slavery; apparently she forgot how wrong it is to force people to do things they don't want to do.
• Nightmare Fuel: The moment when the cockroach is nibbling at a shrunken Diane, especially when it grabs her trapped leg with its mouth, can be very nerve-wrecking for those who are already squeamish of roaches.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Adam has a crush on a young Mila Kunis.
  • Wayne's niece Jenny is played by Chloe Sullivan.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • At one point the parents inadvertently ride an out-of-control Hot Wheels car straight into a laundry chute and go plummeting down into a laundry basket. In the first shot of everybody falling down the chute, Wayne and Gordon noticeably suddenly vanish as they reach the bottom of the screen.
  • The lower budget leads to some very dodgy green screen through most of the miniaturized world, specially in moments without "big" objects or scenery.
• Ugly Cute: The Daddy Long Legs.

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