Micro Mini Kids (2001)

Starring Chad Gordon, Kyle Chaos, Jessica Taylor, Debra Mayer, Sam Page, Lauren Petty, Robert Donavan, George Cost, Tyler Anderson, Rhett Fisher, Colin Bain

Directed by Bruce McCarthy

Expectations: Moderate.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Micro Mini Kids was one of Full Moon’s final kid-focused productions, and it’s a shame because it’s actually one of the good ones! The performances are fun and the characters are oddly well-defined (relatively speaking in terms of Full Moon). The FX sequences are also imaginative and enchanting (despite the seams being quite apparent at times). And probably most importantly in a film directed at kids, it teaches a nice double lesson of learning to accept yourself as you are, and that you shouldn’t assume you know what other people are thinking. The major stumbling point is that it’s very formulaic so the ending is obvious once the pieces are in place, but this doesn’t matter so much because the journey is fun.

Micro Mini Kids was started under the direction of the prolific David DeCoteau, but according to the IMDB trivia he left after only four days of production. Regardless of this, the film feels more like a DeCoteau film than anything else. The movie is credited to Bruce McCarthy but as soon as I saw the bodyguard duo in shades and black vinyl I knew DeCoteau was lurking around somewhere in the film’s development. No one ends up in their underwear, though; a clear sign that DeCoteau did not complete the film. 😀

Anyway, Micro Mini Kids is about Josh (Chad Gordon), a short guy who has the hots for Courtney (Lauren Petty), one of the school’s prettiest girls and who just so happens to be dating Josh’s bully, Blake (Sam Page). Josh and his friend Rudy (Kyle Chaos) have created a working scale model of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and much to their surprise it attracts the attention of Courtney. She invites them to her party at a local club named The Water Den. Instead of being excited, Josh is fixated on how short he is and how he needs to grow a few inches ASAP. That leads Josh and Rudy to the home of ultra-hacker Molly (Jessica Taylor) to “hack” him taller, and we’re off!

I know hacking someone taller doesn’t make sense, but this is a great example of B-Movie logic. The characters in the film don’t even question it for a second. Oh, hack him taller? Sure, let me see what I can do! This spirit of reckless creativity is why I love B-Movies so much, and while they don’t always deliver, the promise of something unique is always more interesting than the safe land of corporate mainstream filmmaking. So later when Josh and Rudy assemble a potion with lipstick, marshmallows, sugar, and other random household items, I watched with an open mind and a big smile. There’s no way to see that coming, and if anyone said they predicted that the potion would then be microwaved to cause an incredible chemical reaction that results in the concoction turning into a simple bowl of water, well, then that’s one lying friend you can feel free to let go off.

Micro Mini Kids is no masterpiece, but if you’re OK with watching a low-budget movie aimed at kids, you could do a lot worse than this. And unlike most of the Moonbeam films, this one is actually available on DVD and rentable from Netflix! So if a Full Moon film inspired by Fantastic Voyage / InnerSpace floats your boat, then give this one a whirl.