Rick Moranis has been largely out of the public eye for the last couple of decades. The comedian and actor, while not officially retiring, has only taken a handful of mostly voice over jobs since the mid-1990s, which made his appearance in an episode of Disney+'s Prop Culture series, which debuted last week, an especially nice surprise. He spoke with host Dan Lanigan about his time working on the hit film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids came out in the late 1980s which was the high point of Rick Moranis' career thanks to movies like Spaceballs, Ghostbusters, and the aforementioned Disney film, which spawned a pair of sequels. And as it turns out, if you look at a lot of the movies that Rick Moranis made during that period, an interesting theme begins to develop. Rick Moranis wore a lot of strange headgear on film. According to the actor...
I wound up with a lot of interesting headgear and I think it totally has to do with the fact that those short spate of films that I was in, in the ‘80s, happened to coincide with a renewed interest in science fiction and that was a result of Star Wars primarily, and Close Encounters. So science fiction really boomed and that’s when comedy came in and suddenly I wound up in these films where for some reason these characters, you’re absolutely right, wind up wearing these odd headpieces.
It's something I'd never truly considered but there does seem to be a running theme where Rick Moranis ends up with weird looking things on his head. In Spaceballs it's the helmet, The Shrunk movies give him a variety of bizarre things of questionable purpose. Even in Ghostbusters, in one scene he ends up with what looks a colander with wires attached to it on his head. I guess if it was the late 80s and you needed a comedian to wear a funny hat, Rick Moranis was your guy.
It's certainly difficult to argue with Rick Moranis' assessment. Many of his most popular films are comedies with a science fiction element and so the movie includes many props designed to look futuristic or at least highly technological. In Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Moranis wears what is essentially a hockey helmet with lights and magnifying glasses attached to it. A replica of which is shown to Moranis in the Prop Culture episode.
And of course, one certainly has to credit Star Wars as an influence for what has to be Rick Moranis' most famous piece of movie headgear.
It's great to see Rick Moranis again, but this won't be our only chance. It's been confirmed that the actor will return for Shrunk, the sequel/reboot of the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids franchise that will also star Josh Gad, Perhaps his decision to appear on Prop Culture was part of a warm up, making himself familiar with the movies once again. If nothing else, seeing him again makes me excited for the fact that the movie is on the way. Although, especially now, we have no real idea when we'll see it.
