Big shoes to fill
When one hears the title Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, the mind naturally wanders to a more macabre and grotesque image than what the film actually offers. Luckily (or, if you’re a sicko, sadly), this title comes from the usage of “blow up” meaning “make large” rather than “detonate.” Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) does not commit any child homicide via explosives in this sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Three years after their previous size-shifting adventure, Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) is now tinkering at a corporate lab while Diane (Marcia Strassman) holds the fort. A not-quite-explained growth beam zaps their toddler before long. At first nothing happens, but grows a little whenever the baby encounters electricity (or, given that electricity is literally everywhere in the modern world, whenever the story needs the baby to grow). Soon the kid is door-frame tall, then neighborhood tall, and inevitably skyscraper tall. Meanwhile, the now-teenaged Nick (Robert Oliveri) develops a bashful crush on babysitter Mandy (Keri Russell). The movie’s middle stretch is the film’s sweet spot, the promise of the premise: Wayne and Nick scrambling to corral a seven-foot wobble-monster around the house, the floorboards rumbling to “The Locomotion” as the baby bounces in rhythm.
Formally, this one swaps out the first film’s huge-prop, kitchen-sink spectacle for lots of compositing, forced perspective, and kaiju-scale gags. That’s a real shift in texture: the original’s tactile, backyard jungle craftsmanship gives way to a totally different mode of camera tricks and clever editing, so unrecognizable it’s barely an obvious sequel. (And indeed, the script did not originate as a Shrunk sequel; a “giant baby” idea had been bouncing around the company for years. Disney faced multiple lawsuits stemming from its failure to properly credit writers in the wake of its release.) Some of the shift in tone is surely because of the switch in directors — Joe Johnston’s thrill-ride instincts are out, and Randal Kleiser’s more whimsical attitude is in. But the film still shares the spirit of a suburban genre adventure with modest thrills of its predecessor, and it too offers some innovative staging and effects. Plus, with Wayne as its face, this still tastes like Honey.
The sequel’s fundamental problem, though, is stakes. In Shrunk, the danger is relentless creatures and overpowering elements; here, the threat is a big baby. They need to shrink the baby, and they spend the second half of the film with a shrink ray they don’t use. We haven’t hit 90 minutes yet, I guess. The film tries to wave off that logic issue with some artificial danger (don’t want to, you know, “blow up” the baby in the other sense), but the sense of “what are we waiting for?” really grows in the third act. Shrunk kept showcasing new hazards to the very end; Blew Up is content to wait out its runtime with a few nifty visual ideas but lots of treading water.
Honey, I Blew Up the Kid has a much more genial screenplay than its predecessor. The integration of the theme of parenting and the way having a kid interrupts a carefully planned life feels natural and earned. Diane, a mama bear, gets super-sized in the climax to soothe her out-of-control toddler. Wayne has been slightly rewritten as a deeply loyal and humble dad and husband. It’s a breezy script, and its sweetness caught me off guard after the snottiness of the first had bugged me.
The Szalinskis all return from the previous film. Moranis is still the franchise’s key presence, his inviting neurosis the series hallmark, and the writing is tooled around him more this time than in the original, which actually spent more time on the teens. Nick and Mandy’s romance in this works for me more than the high school fling in the original, mostly because Russell is a winning presence. Oliveri has toned down his geekiness, but the groundwork he laid in the first film deepens his teen portrait, both imitating and diverging from his father.
I suppose the biggest new cast members (get it?) are the duo of twin toddlers Daniel and Joshua Shalikar playing the baby, Adam. The film’s Wikipedia page is filled with funny anecdotes about the casting and filming of the young’ns. The toddler chaos apparently contributed to the story’s shapelessness, as the filmmakers had trouble with all the on-set wrangling and filming limitations getting the footage they wanted.
Honey, I Blew Up the Kid is ultimately charming but slight, not as memorable or exciting as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids but giving off better vibes as a portrait of a family. It proves out that “suburban dad mad scientist” is a sturdy template; it makes sense that Disney spun off a TV show with the brand. If only the movie had a narrative as big as the baby at its center.
Is It Good?
Nearly Good (4/8)
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4 replies on “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992)”
This seems an eminently fair review – I have warm memories of watching this film on video cassette as a youngster, but have nothing special to say about it beyond a general sense of fond nostalgia.
Although it might be fun to rewatch the film as an adult simply to see if Mr Lloyd Bridges steals the film as thoroughly as usual.
Man, you’re right, I forgot to mention Lloyd Bridges as the old eccentric rich guy. Enjoyed his performance.
Aw, you know, I like this one too. (And I didn’t watch it for the first time till I was, like, 40.) Not as good as the first, and admittedly even more disposable, but I found it a fun bunch of “here’s some scenes suggested by our premise for 89 minutes” silliness.
It’s certainly possible I should have rated this a tick higher, but I wanted to differentiate it from the first, but maybe I should have rated that one a tick higher, too. I’ll probably watch again with my kids at some point, so we’ll see if I bounce back.