Honey, I Blew Up The Kid

Hang on to your big bunnies, for today we revisit the tormented family of inventor Wayne Szalinski for a trip back to the well in 1992’s Honey, I Blew Up The Kid.

I don't know anything about giant babies - let me call in a buddy of mine...

According to most sources, the unexpected financial success of 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk The Kids took Disney by surprise. Prior to release, they had worried that the family-friendly riff on science-fiction horror movies of old was too intense to be successful. Yet the company underestimated a viewing audience already weaned on dark children’s movies of the 1980s (including some of the studio’s own efforts.) Luckily for them, a script was already making its way around the lot, called Big Baby (how’s that for a literal title?) that could be nominally re-worked into a quick-and-dirty sequel.

This time around, the Szalinski family is living in a Las Vegas suburb, Vista Del Mar (which looks suspiciously like Henderson,) apparently having had enough of the dick who lived next door. Father Wayne (Rick Moranis) is working for a big evil corporation, Sterling Labs, under the despicable, business-suited visage of Dr. Charles Hendrickson (John Shea, distinguished from his villainous Lex Luthor in TV’s Lois And Clark only by a pair of glasses,) exemplifying the need to hire lawyers when one invents a world-changing shrinking machine. Wayne’s wife, Diane (Marcia Strassman,) has gotten more tanned and more bland in the time between films; son Nick (Robert Oliveri) is still something of a geek, but seems much more into guitars and girls than science; daughter Amy (Amy O'Neill) goes to college and disappears after the first two minutes. The kid of the title is two-year old Adam, played by one-shot child-acting twins Daniel & Joshua Shalikar, who displays a tendency to break out of his play-pen and furiously reject attempts at naptime – in other words, your average toddler.

Giant hipster baby has raided the vintage stores

Within the first five minutes of this movie, you know we’re in trouble. The first film opened with a very stylish set of animated opening credits that fit the retro-50s vibe of the mad-scientist genre (the sequence looked a lot like the work of Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, so I checked if he worked on them; he didn’t, but future Pixar director Andrew Stanton did.) This movie, on the other hand, begins with animated titles that look more akin to late-70s comic strips, like Moranis did a guest appearance in Ziggy. While Honey, I Shrunk The Kids featured a small number of ramshackle inventions put to use around the Szalinski home, the sequel immediately takes this concept over-the-top; all over the new Szalinski home are robot housekeepers, electric-shaver helmets, and open-air neon toasters (??), among other gizmos. Maybe Szalinski blew whatever money he made from his invention on parts to build all this new junk?

Housekeeper-bot becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th.

Like the inventions, Wayne’s negligent parenting is taken up several notches this time around. Whereas the shrinking accident in the first movie occurred while he and Diane were out of the house, little Adam is zapped by Sterling Lab’s big impressive enlarging ray (or whatever it’s called) while his father’s in the room - he’s just too damn wrapped up in the experiment to pay any mind to his child (noted, older son Nick was there too, in one of the two moments where he appears interested in science again.) Later, while testing out his newly-rebuilt shrinking machine, Szalinski accidentally test-fires it on a pair of motorcycle cops, who are then almost run over by a giant car. How wacky! With all this in mind, while we’re supposed to automatically dislike the snake-like corporate villain Hendrickson, his insistence that Szalinski is too incompetent to be trusted with his own inventions perhaps has some merit. When Lloyd Bridges shows up (sure, why not?) as the eccentric company president, Clifford Sterling, and promptly fires Hendrickson, I couldn’t really picture audiences standing up and cheering it as a victory.

Bastard or hero?

I couldn’t review this movie without pointing out that it was Keri Russell’s first film role – and here she is, in all her frizzy-haired, white-denim shortall-wearing glory. Playing a kind-of valley-girl remnant whom Nick has a crush on, Russell delivers an unmemorable performance – though one can’t blame the young actress when she’s given such uninspired material to work with.

Fifty Shades Of Szalinski

In a way, this film has a lot more in common with some of Disney’s Dexter Reilly films of the 60s and 70s than the movie it follows. And while those films were amusing, they were comedies, not adventures. Watching Honey, I Blew Up The Kid, one simply has a hard time getting past the fact that it’s so different from its predecessor. It’s not like the first film was any kind of masterpiece, but it was most definitely an adventure film, with elements of science-fiction, horror, and comedy. The sequel, on the other hand, is played entirely for laughs. The jarring disconnect in tone can be heard in the music for the films: the first movie’s dynamic and whimsical score by James Horner is succeeded here by a broad and plodding score by film, TV and theme park workhorse Bruce Broughton. Whereas the silliness of the shrinking machine concept led to sequences of action and peril in the first film, here characters usually end up staring up at the rotoscoped (or off-screen) Adam and delivering some kind of big-baby pun. What was a gimmick has devolved here into a one-note joke.

I use "joke" lightly...

After the middling success (and critical pummeling) of this movie, a direct-to-video sequel, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, appeared in 1997 – with only Moranis returning from the original cast. I won’t be reviewing that movie, since I don’t hate myself that much. Nor will I be watching any episodes of the short-lived Honey, I Shrunk The Kids TV series that premiered that same year, replacing Moranis with not-Tom Hanks Peter Scolari. More memorable for me was the Honey, I Shrunk The Audience attraction that debuted at EPCOT in 1994 (later duplicated in Disneyland’s 1998 re-do of Tomorrowland,) which the entire cast of the first sequel returned for. We may discuss that in more detail at some point, but for now I think we’ll have to say goodbye to the Szalinski family, and one of the strangest franchises Disney ever produced.

Honey, I ended the franchise!