| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID
Rating: 
USA. 1992.
Director – Randal Klesier, 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 and reverse the effects of his matter-shrinking device in order to be able to expand matter to giant-size. But then 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.
Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989) was a quite 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. But they lack the same dizzy inspiration that their counterparts in Honey I Shrunk the Kids did. There’s 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 enough 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.
The plot is thin on the ground, being drawn out by such artificial devices 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 wrapup of the story. Maybe the problem is just a matter of perspective – stories of shrunken people trying to survive in a back garden have a whole lot more exciting potential than a story about ordinary people facing a giant rampaging baby.
Director Randal Klesier had had two enormous hits a decade earlier with Grease (1978) and The Blue Lagoon (1980). Alas since then Kleiser has lacked anything 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 (2004).
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).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1993
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