Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

(Aka Shandar: The Shrunken City)

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(1998)

I know I said I don’t want to be super critical of low-budget kids’ films but yikes! The Shrunken City is REALLY low budget. It’s lower than a shoestring budget. It’s lower than a two-strings-and-a-button budget. I’d say The Shrunken City was on a scrounge-out-of-the-dumpster budget. That’s not necessarily a criticism.

Seriously, I think the hundred bucks they (gnomes) had on hand may have gone entirely into the fabrication of the shrunken city bottle prop. They certainly spared every expense on costumes. The marauding alien villains look like they were each sent into a junk yard to accessorize their attire. I’m pretty sure one guy is wearing a warming rack off of a hibachi grill. Incidentally, the climax of this film takes place in a junk yard! Coincidence? I think not.

The term “guerilla production” comes to mind. I imagine they found large scale things going on in town, like a construction site where large machines were working in the background, and just filmed in front of them to create production value.

You probably won’t be surprised at this: I actually really enjoyed this film. Despite the villains’ costumes looking like a high school production of Return to the Forbidden Planet, the story was kind of fun. And they DID manage to procure some amazing locations.

Whatever the place was that they used as the interior of the shrunken city was absolutely ornate! I assume it was some local historic mansion in which they got permission to film. I hope they got permission anyway. I’d hate to imagine how the elderly docent would react if a cast of poorly-dressed aliens showed up unannounced and started ravaging the patrons. It’d be funny though.

The plot is fairly simple. The kids find a large bottle with a tiny city inside and are briefly transported inside. There they learn of the city’s dire situation and the devastating effects it will have on the regular sized city if certain requirements are not met in time.

Complicating matters is the sudden pursuit of those garbage enveloped aliens who want the miniature city’s power source. The main and only conscious member of tiny town is an engineer who can’t grasp why the kids can’t just take the containing bottle to the authorities and explain the impending doom.

I appreciate the kids being very aware of how any Earth bound adult would interpret such a tale instead of going through the old movie trope of trying to explain, failing to convince anyone and ending up in the psyche ward.

They DO however end up getting picked up by police who are VERY familiar with one of the kid’s monkeyshines and tall tales which doesn’t help their situation. Things look grim for a moment save for a random occurrence.

I have to say, I LOVE a random occurrence that affects the story. You don’t see them very often I think because decent writers can sometimes be a bit formulaic. They want everything explained. But random occurrences are very much a part of real life. Many are tragic but some can be a happy accident.

In the case of this film, the bottle gets confiscated by the police. It just so happens a kleptomaniac woman had been recently picked up for shoplifting and while she’s left alone for a moment, sees the bottle tucked away in a cabinet. As you may have guessed; YOINK! She steals it and slips out of the police station unnoticed. Hilarious and a great explanation for getting the bottle away from the police. The kids track her down and she willingly gives it up when she realizes she attracting unwanted attention from junk-covered aliens. Great stuff.

The climax of the film generated some real suspense as it came down to the very last seconds before disaster. I gotta hand it to the editor, great work!

Again, it may be a rinky-dink production but I’m impressed by what they accomplished with minimum resources.

Boxart?