Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992) poster

Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992)

Rating:


USA. 1992.

Crew

Director – Randal Kleiser, Screenplay – Thom Eberhardt, Peter Ebling & Gary Goodrow, Story – Gary Goodrow, Producers – Edward S. Feldman & Dawn Steel, Photography – John Hora, Music – Bruce Broughton, Visual Effects Supervisor – Thomas G. Smith, Miniatures Supervisor – Mark Stetson, Mechanical Effects – Image Engineering (Supervisor – Peter Chesney), Baby Special Effects Makeup – Kevin Yagher, Production Design – Leslie Dilley. Production Company – Disney/Touchwood Pacific Partners I

Cast

Rick Moranis (Professor Wayne Szalinski), Marcia Strassman (Diane Szalinski), Robert Oliveri (Nick Szalinski), Daniel & Joshua Shalikar (Adam Szalinski), John Shea (Dr Charles Hendrickson), Keri Russell (Mandy Parker), Lloyd Bridges (Clifford Sterling)


Plot

Wayne Szalinski is conducting experiments to try to reverse the effects of his matter-shrinking device in order to be able to expand matter to giant-size. Adam, the new Szalinski child, accidentally wanders into the path of the beam and starts expanding. Proximity to radiation sources cause Adam to grow even more and soon he is over a hundred feet tall and heading toward Las Vegas.


The Disney film Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989) was a magical delight. Alas, Honey I Blew Up the Kid is another sequel that lacks the inspired touch of its original.

The special effects sequences, especially the opticals work that allows the baby to become seven feet tall and intermingle with normal actors, are technically well polished. As are the scaled-up baby shoes, candies and toys. However, they lack the same dizzy inspiration that their counterparts in Honey I Shrunk the Kids did. There is no equivalent here of the marvellous scenes flying about on the backs of bees, or of the kids being dragged up into lawnmowers and nearly eaten in Rick Moranis’s cereal. Amusing as they sometimes are, the sequences here lack anything that sticks in the memory and at worst are dominated by loud and silly slapstick scenes involving the baby.

Daniel & Joshua Shalikar as the giant child amok in Las Vegas in Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992)
Daniel & Joshua Shalikar as the giant child amok in Las Vegas

The plot is thin on the ground, being drawn out by artificial devices such as the need to keep the baby still for 12.5 seconds. The ending where the problem is solved by raising mother Marcia Strassman to giant size to sort the baby out seems a badly contrived and remarkably silly wrap-up of the story. Maybe the problem is simply a matter of perspective – stories of shrunken people trying to survive in a back garden have far more exciting potential than a story about ordinary people facing a giant rampaging baby.

Director Randal Kleiser had had two enormous hits a decade earlier with Grease (1978) and The Blue Lagoon (1980). Since then, Kleiser has lacked any hits and has mostly worked as a director-for-hire. He had dabbled in genre material on several occasions with the underrated Disney film Flight of the Navigator (1986), Big Top Pee-Wee (1988) and Little Red Riding Hood (2006).

This was followed by the marginally better video-released Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves! (1997) and a dismal tv series Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1997-9).


Trailer here


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