Innerspace (1987)

Joe Dante's Innerspace concerns a test pilot shrunk to microscopic size and accidentally injected into the body of a nervous grocery clerk, and it has no higher purpose than the next gag. The pod navigates an optic nerve, a stomach, an eardrum. The host navigates a shopping mall. This is a machine built for zaniness, and it runs clean.

The cultural ledger comes up empty, and we mean that as a finding. The cast is white, with Harold Sylvester in a supporting role and no comment made on the matter. Meg Ryan's Lydia is a reporter who seduces a henchman to move the plot along and later turns out to be pregnant, which the film treats as a plot mechanic and nothing more. Race, climate, wealth, body image, neurodivergence: none of it appears. Jack's hypochondria is a punchline, not a diagnosis. The villain's scheme involves stealing miniaturization technology from a rival lab, and the screenplay never once suggests that this says anything about capital. It says something about a chip.

What remains is craft. The visual effects won an Academy Award, and the shrinking sequences still hold up, which is more than most 1987 comedies can claim. The film is loud, overstuffed, and entirely without a sermon. It asks nothing of the audience except a willingness to watch Martin Short's face contort. We score it accordingly. A zero here is not a verdict on quality. It is a note on vintage. Some bottles are simply not fortified.