The Incredible Shrinking Woman
Tags: satire

Plot synopsis:
The film opens outside of a grocery store, where a man is giving out samples of a new canned cheese product called "Cheese Tease", which nobody seems to enjoy eating. Pat Kramer (Lily Tomlin) emerges from the store with her two young children, Jeff (Justin Dana) and Beth (Shelby Balik), along with their maid, Concepcion (Maria Smith). The man forces a sample of Cheese Tease on Pat, and on the way home a can of air freshener explodes inside the car, fogging everybody and making them gag. Once home, Pat greets her neighbor, Judith Beasley (also played by Lily Tomlin), a busybody type who is in charge of the neighborhood council. Judith makes Pat listen to her sales pitch for a line of female beauty products, and she leaves Pat with some samples. Pat's husband, Vance (Charles Grodin), is returning that night from a business trip. He works for an advertising agency that pushes all sorts of products. He gives Pat a new perfume, accidentally spilling it on her dress, and tells her that they need to come up with a name for the new product. Pat suggests "Sexpot", which Vance seems to like. That night, Pat's dress begins smoking, which Pat and Vance are unaware, and the next day it is missing.At a meeting, Vance pitches the idea of calling the perfume "Sexpot" at a meeting with the perfume's makers. His boss, Dan (Ned Beatty), thinks the idea is genius, and he hints that Vance could be up for a promotion. He gives Vance a new product to christen, a new glue. At home that night, Pat is hosting the neighborhood council meeting, at which Judith berates other neighbors for petty misbehavior. Concepcion accidentally drops a vase, and Vance uses the new glue to repair it. Chaos erupts, though, when Pat gets some of the glue on her fingers and ends up glued to other people and objects in the house.By this time, Pat and Vance have both noticed that Pat is smaller than she used to be. When she visits a doctor, she finds that she's two inches shorter than she normally is. As the days pass, the phenomenon continues, but Pat insists that she not be treated any differently than she ever was. She stands on things to reach the kitchen countertop, and goes about her daily routine, which seems to be preparing meals and buying products. Eventually she's referred to doctors at the "Kleinman Institute", particularly Dr. Eugene Nortz (Henry Gibson) and Dr. Ruth Ruth (Elizabeth Wilson), who tell her that the reason she is shrinking has to do with the various chemicals she's been exposed to through her household products. They tell her to go home and wait for them to come up with an antidote, which she does, but secretly they are part of an secret company called "The Organization for World Management". They intend to somehow make a "shrink serum" from her blood and use it in a plot to shrink the entire world into subservient miniatures.Meanwhile, Pat's celebrity begins to increase the more she shrinks. Judith convinces her to leave the house on a grocery store run, and she sits on the edge of the shopping cart like a child. When she starts feeling self conscious about the gawkers she attracts, Judith smuggles her out of the store in a shopping bag. Eager to tell her story about how household chemicals caused her to shrink, she accepts an invitation to appear on the Mike Douglas Show, a daytime talk show, but Dan convinces Vance that she shouldn't reveal the cause of her plight, lest they risk losing clients in the agency. Pat begrudgingly obeys and claims she doesn't know why she's shrinking.Eventually Pat's size has decreased so much that she moves into a doll house that her family gives her for Christmas, along with a wardrobe of doll-sized clothing. She begins to lose control of her life due to her size; she can't control the kids anymore, her sex life with Vance disappears, and she has a hard time doing the household chores that she used to do, like cooking family meals. The evil doctors enlist Dan to help them lure the unsuspecting Pat into a position where they can exploit her, and at one point they make her a lucrative offer to be a spokesperson for more household products, but Pat refuses on principle.Finally they decide to kidnap Pat, and they get their chance the next morning when a freak mishap occurs. As she helps Concepcion prepare breakfast, Pat has an argument with Vance and the kids. Desperate after they leave, she loses her footing while standing on the kitchen counter and falls into the sink, landing in the garbage disposal. Concepcion comes back to the kitchen and starts cleaning up, shoving food into the garbage disposal and nearly drowning Pat with it. She almost turns on the disposal, but is interrupted by the doorbell, a distraction that the kidnappers use to gain entrance to the house through the back door. Pat manages to climb out of the garbage disposal and leaves one of her doll shoes behind. After the goons from The Organization for World Management kidnap her, Concepcion returns to the kitchen, only seeing Pat's shoe in the sink after she turns on the garbage disposal. Everyone assumes Pat is dead, and they hold a funeral service for her in the back yard, where they bury her shoe in a matchbox.In reality, Pat has been taken to a secret underground lab, where she is kept in a rat cage while the doctors study her. She shares space in the lab with a caged gorilla named Sidney (Rick Baker), who is extremely intelligent and seems to understand both spoken English and sign language. A lab assistant named Rob (Mark Blankfield) tells Pat that the doctors have told him that she's really just a clone of the real Pat Kramer, who they say is dead. Pat tries to tell him this isn't true, but he doesn't believe her. With Sidney's help, she does manage to gain access to a file folder on the table near her cage, where she reads all about her case and discovers the nefarious plans to shrink the world. Pat maneuvers her way to a telephone, again with Sidney's help, and manages to make a frantic phone call to Vance. Vance becomes hysterical upon learning that Pat has been kidnapped, but the doctors cut the phone call short when Dan tips them off that Pat has made communciation with the outside world Rob enters the lab and sees Pat making the call, but she manages to convince Rob that her story is true by showing him the top secret plans she found in the file folder. Rob bolts from the lab, but Pat and Sidney hear gunshots and fear Rob is dead.Pat is now trapped underneath a funnel, while Vance goes on national television and tells the world that Pat is alive and has been kidnapped. Pat and Sidney are overjoyed when Rob returns, still alive, and helps them escape. After a lengthy chase where numerous armed guards pursue them and fire at them, they manage to make it to the surface and exit the lab, which happens to be located underneath the very shopping center Pat used to patronize. The guards give chase, and the disruption causes shoppers to collide, resulting in a large puddle of laundry detergent and other household liquids. The guards back off when Rob gets the attention of the police, stomping on their feet so they will arrest him. Sidney deposits Pat on a table near the Cheese Tease man's microphone, where she gets everyone's attention over a loudspeaker. Judith is there too, holding a demonstration outside the supermarket, and everyone is stunned to see Pat still alive. She gives a brief speech where she says she felt like she had to warn everyone about the threat from corporations and products, but she says "You don't really need me to tell you what's wrong with the world." She tells Rob to make sure the secret plans get into the hands of the authorities. Already only a few inches tall, Pat begins to shrink away to nothing, and Vance and the children arrive just in time for her to say goodbye to them before she seems to vanish, the tiny garment she wore blows away in the breeze, landing in the puddle of liquids near the table. The onlookers are mortified, especially Pat's family and friends. Unseen by anybody, the puddle begins to swirl, seemingly on its own.Later that night, in a tribute to Pat, countries around the world simultaneously salute her with church bells, the news programs giving coverage and linking via satellite. Outside the Kramer residence, a police car discreetly pulls up and an officer comes to the front door, saying "This lady says she belongs here." A normal-sized Pat bursts inside, ecstatic to be home. The family is shocked and elated, and Concepcion screams and collapses. Sidney is at the house, too, and the kids tell her Vance said it would be alright if he lived with them. Pat babbles that the puddle seems to have reversed the shrinking process, returning her to her normal size. Vance tries to put her wedding ring back on, but it won't fit, and as she contemplates this, the shoe she is wearing suddenly bursts as her foot seems to enlarge all on its own. Pat gives a cryptic smile--apparently she's not done growing.

Review: Dry wit, dual roles (she's good at that), Ernestine the operator, Edith Ann, the little brat (in a deleted scene).
Granted, when I last watched this movie, I was probably no more than 10 years old, but it has stuck with me and I would love to see it again!
To me, the premise and the antics are what carries this movie in a way that it's a must have in any comedy fan's video library.
The physical comedy that stems from Lily Tomlin's vertically challenging situation is pure fun.
movie, with several scenes knowingly re-acted completely close to original.Instead of Grant Williams, here we have Lily Tomlin as everyday housewife slaving for her family and shrinking away, to the delight of media hungry for sensations.
Along with quite inane plot, everything is exaggerated: this is not a kind, loving family but a bunch of spoiled brats throwing tantrums, husband and his colleagues are more concerned with profit, Mexican maid is non stop dancing and even neighbors are more concerned about giving interviews than actually giving Tomlin support.
Any normal person would pack her bags long ago and run away, but Tomlin - being good wife and self-sacrificing mother - totters on, even as her steps became smaller and smaller.
It sounded as a good idea on the paper but is not really funny, perhaps because main character is simply not likable enough - Tomlin is great comedian when given chance to be wicked but as a perpetually serving housewife she is simply annoying (only once, she appears as rude telephone operator "Ernestine" and that minute lightens up the screen).
Perhaps great fun for teenagers who delight in obvious jokes but not particularly involving as movie experience and sadly, very far from thrill of 1957.
Captured that turn towords the 80's average subburban family, as captured in so many movies like Close encounters, E.T., Poltergeist, Goonies, Mr.Mom and so many other great films of that era.
An incredibly funny movie.
This is one of Lily Tomlin's best movies.
It's charming and amusing, and as a kid, I guess when Pat disappeared it was a little scary, but I knew she would be OK, because she was the star of the movie.
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN, in my opinion, is an absolutely wild and wacky fantasy that you will surely enjoy.
If you ask me, the disposal was the scariest obstacle that Pat (Lily Tomlin) encountered.
In conclusion, if you like Lily Tomlin or hilarious fantasies, I highly recommend this absolutely wild and wacky fantasy that you will surely enjoy.
Incredible Shrinking Woman, The (1981) ** (out of 4) Semi-spoof of The Incredible Shrinking Man has Lily Tomlin playing a housewife who tests several of her husband's (Charles Grodin) household products and soon finds herself shrinking.
12 and under cinema.I saw this in the theater when I was 11, liked it, and filed the memory of it under "good movie" in my mental cache.
All of it's socio-political subtext --endless stabs at Madison Avenue, mass marketing and gross consumerism: Pat is a pimped-out product whore in the merciless clutches of her scAmway-pushing neighbor, and it eventually begins eating away at her, quite literally--  these bits of 'wink-wink' adult humor sailed right over my Bazooka gum-chomping, 11 year-old head.The fun in "Incredible Shrinking Woman" was the ignorance to the script's so-called message.
What tickled us kiddies in the audience was the sight of a pocket-sized Lily Tomlin sporting plastic Barbie sneakers, bedding down at night on a cot in the Barbie Dream House, and cruising down the hallway carpet in an out-of-control Barbie Dream Car. And when the 10-inch version of Pat attempts to perform her daily chores, such as washing the dishes...hee hee...
fun stuff if you're a kid.This flick resurfaced on cable recently, I was reminded that most of what we liked as 11 year olds is pretty cringe-worthy to us as adults.
But I went ahead and watched it anyway because it has 3 things working for it:-Lily Tomlin-the nostalgia factor-& that irritatingly catchy "What would we do without Galaxy Glue?" tune.
Maybe its because I remember seeing this movie on TV so often when I was younger that I still think its hilarious.
Its not the best comedy, but some scenes are really funny in a cheesy, early '80s sort of way.
Lily Tomlins smile could brighten up any film, and this was directed by Joel Schumacher.
I like how her entire neighborhood seems to be living in a commercial ("Pat, its BoatSheen!") and I think her narration is particularly funny.
Lily Tomlin is much more appealing playing funny modern women than kooky characters in disguise....
A good idea that doesn't work: a sassy, sweetly-zonked wife and mother discovers to her surprise that all the household and sundry chemicals her advertising-executive husband brings home are making her shrink.
Actually, this gloppy-looking comedy does manage to get off on the right foot, with playful and funny glimpses into Tomlin's home-life, but once she shrinks and crosses paths with ready-set villains (not to mention talk show host Mike Douglas...who sings!!), the movie frays and falls apart.
It's badly photographed (one of the worst-looking movies of the 1980s--what were they thinking when they watched the dailies?) and allows star Tomlin too much room to stretch her comedic chops (playing kooky characters incognito, Lily is much friendlier and funnier just playing a quirky modern woman).
This film is just a one-woman-show with Tomlin in three roles (two of them completely pointless), but the jokes are at best worth of some cheap sitcom and the movie fails almost each attempt to be funny.
Grodin is super-lazy and the introduction of a man in a gorilla suit in the second part of the movie cannot revive a predictable, banal plot with a moral not more complex nor subtle than a Saturday morning cartoon.
Just go ahead and watch 9 to 5 again if you want to see Lily Tomlin in something funny depicting more realistic struggles of women.
Tomlin plays a suburban housewife who suddenly begins to shrink, presumably from a combination of household chemicals and products that her husband's firm has marketed.
The whole concept ends up taking a backseat to sight gags involving Tomlin climbing around on expanded sets depicting household rooms and appliances.
Satire sometimes slips into madcap comedy when the director (this time Joel Schumacher) doesn't keep a tight enough hold on things.
Charles Grodin and Ned Beatty provide their usual solid support, and Tomlin does her best in multiple roles.
Pat Kramer (Lily Tomlin) lives in the suburbs of Tasty Meadows, California.
Her neighbor Judith Beasley (Lily Tomlin) is a cosmetics saleslady.
She faces a barrage of chemicals and consumer products including an experimental glue from her husband's work.
The simple visual of a tiny Lily Tomlin in the everyday world is fun.
The movie can build to the surreal later on as she shrinks and they throw in a gorilla.
Loved this Lily Tomlin movie from the 80's when I was a kid..
If I were still a child I would perhaps give it a higher score, but from what I remember it did get a bit lame at times and the effects while good for a kid would not stand up as well now.
Still, it was a funny movie about a woman whose husband is like with an ad office or with a company that makes a lot of different products.
Still, Lily Tomlin is great in the lead role as the shrinking woman and Charles Grodin does an admirable job as the father, though it is a role he can do in his sleep..
Veteran comedic actress Lily Tomlin really gets to show off her chops here by playing no less than three roles.
The principal role is that of Pat Kramer, a suburban wife & mom who mysteriously starts shrinking one day due to overexposure to an abundance of chemicals.
Charles Grodin is cast as the harried husband struggling to accept his wifes' diminishing size as a fact of life; Ned Beatty is Grodins' sleazy boss.Partly a spoof of the classic Richard Matheson story "The Incredible Shrinking Man", this wacky 1980s fantasy functions mainly as a satire of rampant consumerism.
But the man who deserves a special shout-out is makeup effects ace and multiple Oscar winner Rick Baker, who hilariously, endearingly plays a gorilla named Sidney.Written by Jane Wagner, and directed by Joel Schumacher (his feature filmmaking debut), this was admittedly never quite as funny as this viewer would have liked, but it was still hard to dislike.
It's films like this that make you wonder if directors actually look at at the movie when it's finished.
With talent like Oscar nominees Lily Tomlin and Ned Beatty in front of the camera, you gotta wonder why they signed on in the first place.
LILY TOMLIN IS AWESOME!!!.
In my opinion, Lily Tomlin was great in this film!
This is one of my top 10 comedy films of all time, and so was Nine to Five (a year earlier)!!!
Dead comedy that wastes the talents of Tomlin and Grodin.
Good family movie.
This movie has good actors.
Lily Tomlin is playing wife.
I think she does that in other films too and she does it good.
The plot in the film is very good and has plenty of room for drama and comedy.
Whoever says this is a bad film is entitled to say so, but has it occurred to them that Ms. Tomlin is a comedian?
The ESW is a comedy, the old movie was not.
The funniest parts of the more recent version are that Lily Tomlin plays characters she used to play in her acts.
For comparison to this movie, I would look at Innerspace with Dennis Quaid (a film listed on the IMDB) .
Looking back, the plot was rather hokey and they relied too much on Tomlin's star power.
Tomlin, Grodin, and Beatty do their best to follow a god-awful script, which beats you over the head with insanely liberal thinking (AND I'M A LIBERAL!).
Any film with such a simplistic plot (SHRINK THE WORLD'S POPULATION?!) and dumb comedy has no right to be preachy.
While the first half hour or so was amusing and pretty right-on satire for the early 80s consumer mindset, the film got too bogged down in its own pretentiousness and quickly fell apart.What really bugged me, and many others in the class (including the professor) was the horrifically stereotyped maid, Concepcion.
I remember the great shrinking black and white films - the horror of the giant spider, and the shock of finding out that our pint-sized hero has shrunk even more!
Lily Tomlin is Fantastic in this Role.
You might as well Re name this The Incredible Sexy Shrinking Woman, the Smaller Pat gets the Sexier she is....Look how Beautiful Lily is in this movie....Really look at her.
Remember this is a Pre 1990's sadly out of the closet Lily Tomlin.
Lily is Great looking in this.
The Incredible Shrinking Woman is Awesome and Sexy.
This Movie is a Classic for fans of Lily Tomlin.
Lily is Featured on the now Rare Mike Douglas show looking Sexy in a dress (Barbie Doll Sized)and everyone of us loves her.Overall a great Lily Tomlin movie.
I Love Lily Tomlin in this role....I would love to be cast in the role as Vance..
The director Joel Schumacker made a fine movie criticism over the american consumerism on style comedy of the 80',in that time Lily Tomlin was a great name is this field and made a fantastic three roles,but somehow the picture is a bit dated now nevertheless has good moments,jus a few a mix of comedy,sci-fi and family movie.,Charles Grodin is the same patetic guy and Ned Beatty in best performance as always as bad guy,80' cheese but never disposable!Resume:First watch: 1987 / How many: 3 / Source: TV-DVD-R / Rating: 6.25.
Lily Tomlin is known for her acerbic wit, her sharp tone, and her sense of style for all these years.
Ever since "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In", most of her characters come to life in this movie.
In "The Incredible Shrinking Woman", she plays Pat Kramer, a housewife who started to shrink, at a alarming rate.
A fun movie, lots of gags, and it was a great start for "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" later in the years.
This film is one of the best comedies ever made and it features Lily Tomlin at her comedic best.
Here, Miss Tomlin not only portrays Pat Cramer, the title character but she also gets the opportunity to showcase her comedic genius by portraying several of the characters that helped make her performances on "Saturday Night Live" and "Laugh-In" the stuff of legend.
She plays her own chemically conscious neighbor Judith, as well as 2 of her most beloved characters Earnestine the telephone operator and Little Edith Anne!
Inexplicablly, some copies and some airings on networks such as Encore cut out the Edith Anne skit, which really annoys me personally but I have seen so many different versions of this film that I practically have the scene memorized anyhow (who can forget Tomlin's hysterically funny line as Edith Anne to herself as Pat Kramer..."Is that you, Hamster lady?").
The cause of Pat Kramer's shrinking dilemma is a chemical reaction caused by the use of too many commercial products which really sends a powerful political message as relates to American consumerism that still holds true today.
This movie is pure family fun.
Very cute and would suggest it to anyone who enjoys a good old 80's flick.
I can personally say that these days we need more films like this.
Lily Tomlin is great in this movie.
I personally think she is one of the masters of comedy, and own several of movies she is in.
Yep that's right, way before we got ultra campy, neon lit Batman movies we got this, a campy, excessively colourful romp based (of course) on the Richard Matheson novel 'The Shrinking Man'.
Yeah I know exactly what you're thinking, I'd never heard of this movie either, well judging by the films poster it doesn't look like anybody gave it much hope frankly, holy cheeseballs!So I think we know what's gonna happen here don't we.
In this movie the protagonist suffers from a serve reaction to an experimental perfume her husband is working on, along with various other household things.
Unfortunately despite the fact they have clearly tried to move away from the old formulaic notions that have surrounded previous movies like this, this new concept is really quite daft.
Another odd thing was the usage of Lily Tomlin as multiple characters.
The silly thing was you can clearly tell its Tomlin, there is no real effort to not make her look any different, so in that sense its not really funny or clever (an Eddie Murphy challenge this is not).
I might add her various characters aren't exactly very different from each other...and did I mention she isn't funny?Effects wise the movie does hold its own well and this is mainly down to the old old use of large scale props and sets.
Tomlin looks great within the oversized sets and the forced perspective illusion, it just never fails to win that old trick.
The best thing about the movie effects wise is easily Rick Baker and his gorilla suit.
The only stupid thing about that (along with all the other stupid stuff), is at the end the Kramer family decide to keep the gorilla as a pet, because that won't cause any problems will it (do I see a gorilla based sequel with hilarious gorilla shrinking antics??..no).Yeah so this was a pretty mixed bag really.
The visuals are undoubtedly lovely to look at in places, very colourful and cheerful, good designs and creativity, but it doesn't really make much sense why its like that.
The incredible shrinking comedy....
Lily Tomlin, very funny in the film's first half, is left out to dry in the film's second half.
Tomlin is not well served by Charles Grodin as her husband...he's wasted.
Henry Gibson plays a scientist, but there's nothing remotely funny about him or his character...it's a real waste.
The presence of the hysterically funny Lily Tomlin holds together this comic spoof of the 1957 sci-fi classic "The Incredible Shrinking Man", utilizing a stereotypical stay-at-home sitcom mom to be the victim of some chemically induced poison that makes her shrink away.
There's more questions than answers here, especially since it is obvious that she gets a dosage of the chemical that shrinks her while in the car with her children, and especially why as she shrinks nobody thinks to fire the stereotypically lazy Spanish maid (Maria Smith) who watches her novellas while Tomlin seems to do all the chores.
There are some very funny scenes of how Tomlin deals with her shrinking size, being attacked in her children's closet of now very large toys, especially a urinating doll that has more water pressure for her than any shower could ever hope to.
At times, it seems like it is also trying to be too much of a commercial for products that helped sponsor the movie, although the scene of the babbity neighbors yelling commercial slogans at her as she drives down the cul-de-sac is very funny.
Though it contains a few humorous tributes (the central character's kids trying to frighten their mother with a rubber spider on a string, etc), it is a completely different story.Pat Kramer is an ordinary housewife who suddenly finds she is shrinking.
This film is entertaining and has a good cast (I'd never have realized Lily Tomlin was playing those two characters but for the credits list at the end of the film), is also a social satire about the way tacky products and advertising are taking over society.