Miniature Wife: Honey, you’re shrunken! (critical)

A funny couple comedy in massacre game mode, which struggles to find the right tone.

No one has forgotten the 90s Disney comedy, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

This time, inspired by a short story by Manuel Gonzalez, it is the wife who shrinks like an ant.

Much crazier than The Shrinking Man – released in 2025 – where Jean Dujardin survived at home based on the novel by Richard Matheson, this new variation of the reduced human model is presented as an allegory of married life. That of a couple that no longer works: a scientist husband and a novelist wife lacking inspiration. While he is developing an invention capable of revolutionizing the world and agronomy, he unfortunately shrinks his wife. Oops.

We know the joke. But in Miniature Wife – which begins today on Canal + in France – miniaturization takes on a somewhat clumsy figurative meaning, representing the way in which both tend to demean each other to the point of becoming rikiki, almost invisible.

The metaphor is amusing, but too often sounds like a low-end couples therapy session. The work explores the fragility of love and ambition under the cover of its absurd premise. And as they try to cope with the brutal reality of this new existence, they are forced to wonder if their marriage – and their love – can survive. Maybe this miniaturization will be the trigger they needed to overcome the biggest crisis of their lives and fall in love with each other again…

But the experience is not up to par (pun intended).

Both strange and light, the drama stretches its premise to excess, drowning in slightly rudimentary special effects. Sometimes too harsh, sometimes too cloying, this game of massacre always seems to be looking for the right tone, even if Matthew Macfadyen, unforgettable Tom from Succession, gives us the impression of the odious and evil spouse in his relationship, facing the poisonous charm of Elizabeth Banks.

Miniature Wife, to be seen on Canal + from July 9, 2026