A funny, effective and familiar comedy that deserves to be brought back from obscurity.
This is one of those “no bones” comedies that we can watch with the whole family without any fear of embarrassing or inappropriate scenes for kids or deeply critical grandparents. It's a film from the 80s, quite dated, but that's not a problem for people like me, who actually like old films.
The story is very good and revolves around an experiment that goes wrong and involves the miniaturization of a ship with a human occupant, which should be introduced into a laboratory rabbit: when the laboratory is robbed by bandits who want to steal that technology, one of the scientists escapes and ends up injecting the liquid containing the ship into the body of an inadvertent citizen. What happens next is quite hilarious.
Dennis Quaid does a decent job as the ship's pilot, a daring combat aviator who volunteers for the experiment. I thought that the actor doesn't leave his comfort zone, he doesn't have a complicated task, and he just brags. Better than him, Martin Short shone as the fearful and shy man who, by chance, was dragged into that mess after being injected against his will. The actor managed to give the character an interesting evolutionary arc, where the character gradually gains more confidence and an adventurous spirit. Meg Ryan has the worst material: she just needs to be attractive and look scared.
Joe Dante deserves a shoutout for the work he did on this film. He's not a director I know very well, but I think this film is in line with what he likes to do most. The film may not be the most scientifically rigorous in the world (never, I believe, has the scientific community thought of anything similar to miniaturizing objects or people), but it makes up for it with humor and an unpretentious and good-natured spirit. The effects team did an excellent job, whether in the moments in which the ship is miniaturized or in the filming inside the human organism, where the realism is well achieved.
