Article by Cristina Keh
Edited by Regiena Siy 

As a child, have you ever imagined what it would be like to explore the world while being the size of an ant? Most of us have probably thought the same thing after watching movies such as Alice in Wonderland, Epic, and the Tinkerbell series, which involve seeing the world from a perspective that humans will never get to experience firsthand. Boonie Bears: The Big Shrink has a similar concept, allowing the main characters, who have been shrunk, to go through many challenges to reach the machine that will restore them back to normal size. 

It starts off with a child named Vick, who had been neglected by his father because he was too busy with work. They later on had a fight, which became their last memory of each other. Fast forward to today, Vick is still living alone, when his father decides to visit. His father tried to pry too much into Vick’s life, which caused them to have another fight. Vick then discovers how to complete a shrinking ray he had been working on, and accidentally shrinks himself along with two bear brothers, Briar and Bramble. After being unable to find Vick, Vick’s dad leaves along with the shrink ray. Vick, Briar, and Bramble then navigate through the world, meeting allies along the way to try and restore themselves to normal size.

Though this movie was able to be very touching because of Vick’s newfound appreciation for his father, it had a couple of flaws. One of them being the inclusion of multiple side characters that were introduced but barely shown throughout the whole movie, such as the reporter and the lobster gang. Second, there was not much purpose for the two bears Briar and Bramble. They were present for most of the movie, but the only action they had done to move the plot along was causing Vick to shrink. After that, most of their lines and actions were for comic relief and did not help with finding the shrinking machine. This movie would work best as a family movie since children would be enthralled by the adventures that the characters have to go through without much concern for the plot. Otherwise, there would be no other suitable circumstance to watch this movie.