GUTTY PLOT

We couldn’t help sneak-previewing the script for “Innerspace,” which director Joe Dante has in postproduction for exec producer Steven Spielberg. Written by Jeffrey Boam, it’s a variation on “Fantastic Voyage”--the one about miniaturized people. Only this time, there’s comedy, too.

See, Dennis Quaid is this hunky U.S. Navy captain who’s turned tiny--by way of a top-secret Defense Department project--and inadvertently winds up inside timid grocery store clerk Martin Short. (Well, actually, Quaid is inside a miniaturized submersible pod in Short’s bloodstream.)

With Quaid traveling intestinally and bad guys (after the top secrets) on his trail, Short falls into a panic, since Quaid’s got a limited air supply. Should time run out, Quaid nobly suggests that Short simply blow his nose into a Kleenex. Gasps Short: “Wouldn’t that be murder?”

The bad guys are led by Vernon Wells, who works for a businessman whose crooked ventures include a scheme to sell California table wines to Third World nations. As one character notes: “Anyone who would try to sell white Zinfandel to Peruvian Indians is capable of almost anything.”