Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992)

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Although apparently not intended as a sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid was released in 1992. For those unfamiliar with the term, to “blow up” something means to enlarge it such as in to “blow up a picture”. We’re not talking about anything dynamite-related here. You’ll get the point as we traverse the film. Enjoy my review of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid!

And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!

Directed this time by Randal Kleiser, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid takes place a few years after the events of the first film and opens with an animated title sequence like the first film.

The Szalinski family now live in Nevada. Wayne Szalinski, played again by Rick Moranis, is still an inventor few people take seriously and still a loving and caring father and husband. He lives with his wife, Diane, played again by Marcia Strassman, and their two children, Nick and Amy, played again by Robert Oliveri and Amy O’Neill, respectively. Actually this time they have three children; they’ve since welcomed a son, Adam, played by Daniel & Joshua Shalikar. He’s currently two years old and does everything toddlers do such as sometimes breaking things and going into Nick’s room without permission, etc.

Nick is now a teenager and has a crush on his classmate, Mandy, played by Keri Russell in her film debut. Amy has no role in this film so they send her off to college at the beginning of the film, never to be seen or heard from again!

Wayne works at Sterling Labs where they’re currently trying to create an enlarger ray based on Wayne’s shrink ray from the first film. The project is headed by Dr. Hendrickson, played by John Shea, who constantly dismisses Wayne and never listens to his ideas or suggestions. One day, Wayne enters the lab to play around with the enlarger ray in an attempt to get it to work. He’s had to bring Nick and Adam with him since Diane left to go take Amy to college.

While working on the ray, Adam accidentally gets in the way allowing himself to get zapped, unbeknownst to Wayne or Nick. The enlarger ray overloads and proves seemingly unsuccessful. Wayne and the kids head home and to their surprise, when Adam is near the microwave, he manages to grow almost as tall as the inside of the house! Wayne comes to the conclusion that Adam must have gotten in the way of the enlarger ray and now when he’s next to an electrical device like a microwave, he grows! They disguise the baby and drive him back to the lab with the hopes of sneaking him in and using the shrink ray there to render him toddler-size once again. However, Dr. Hendrickson has arrived and fires Wayne after the power overload erased all their project files. Wayne hides Adam from Dr. Hendrickson and doesn’t tell him what happened.

As Wayne and the kids drive home, they see that Diane has returned. At first, Wayne wants to hide his blunder from her, but knows he can’t. Soon enough, the secret is out that Diane is the mother of a huge baby! As she stifles the urge to kill Wayne, Wayne gets an idea. He still has the original shrink ray prototype he made in the first film stored away in a storage unit somewhere. He and Diane go off to get it and leave Nick home to watch Adam.

However Wayne had previously called Mandy over to babysit Adam so that he and Nick could have some father-son bonding time at the movies. After the whole “blowing up the kid” situation, he forgot to cancel Mandy resulting in her showing up at the house. She faints at the sight of Adam and after she regains consciousness, Nick explains everything to her including how he and Amy were shrunk by their father in the first film. She takes it about as well as you’d expect.

By now, Adam’s been watching TV and grown even larger in size breaking out of the house through the wall and into the neighborhood. He’s no secret anymore as Nick and Mandy run after him. Wayne and Diane have returned home to see the state of the neighborhood, the presence of law enforcement, as well as Dr. Hendrickson who’s gotten aware of the situation. He wants the two arrested, but the president of Sterling Labs, Clifford Sterling, played by Lloyd Bridges, instead fires Dr. Hendrickson and accompanies Wayne and Diane to follow Adam. By now, Adam’s headed towards the Las Vegas strip and has grown as tall as the casinos there!

Wayne can zap Adam with the shrink ray, but it requires Adam staying still for twelve seconds, a nigh impossible task for a toddler! They try all sorts of methods to get him to stay put including flying Wayne up to him by helicopter t sing to him. Eventually, they use the enlarger ray to make Diane huge allowing her to hold Adam down long enough to be shot with the shrink ray. Adam and Diane are shrunk back to normal size and everybody’s happy! Well, actually Nick and Mandy were in Adam’s pocket when he was zapped by the shrink ray, so they’re now shrunk! Wayne manages to find them though but gives them some time together as Mandy has started to fall for Nick.

And that was Honey, I Blew Up the Kid! It’s honestly an enjoyable, charming, and funny film! It’s probably not as good as the first film, but it’s still an enjoyable sequel! The acting was great overall; Lloyd Bridges takes his role very seriously and professionally for the subject matter! I’m also really impressed with Robert Oliveri’s performance! Keri Russell gave the worst performance in this film, but I’ll give her some slack since it was her first movie.

My biggest complaint of the film is them just sending Amy away and not including her in the film at all! Apparently the original script this was based on (before they decided to make it a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids sequel) didn’t have a role for Amy to play so that’s why she wasn’t in the movie except for the beginning. But, I feel that’s a really poor excuse and they could have easily written some reason for her to be part of the story! Other complaints I have are that the villain is pretty generic and that the special effects are sometimes good, but hokey at other times. There’s also some interesting product placement in the film including Wet ‘n Wild, Hard Rock Cafe, and Coca-Cola.

But besides that, I really enjoyed this film and I think you will too!

So, my final score for this film is 29/35 = 82.86% (B-) !

The next review will be posted on March 24, 2023.