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Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992)


Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992)



5/10



Starring
Rick Moranis
Marcia Strassman
Lloyd Bridges
Robert Oliveri
John Shea


Directed by Randal Kleiser


Here, Disney decided to throw out the single neighbor and go for a ton of people instead.
I assume the executives looked at the financial success of the first film and thought, “Bigger will be better.” My memory of this movie when I saw it in the 90s is a fun one, more fun than seeing it now.
They must have said, “Let’s get rid of a small family problem and make everything bigger.” Just like Rick Moranis’ character made his youngest son grow from a 3-foot-tall child to 7 feet, then 14 feet, and finally 50 feet, Disney did the same with the scale of the movie’s events.


The first movie cost 18 million; this one cost 40 million to produce. And you can see where all that money went—more cast, more special effects to cover all the places the giant child went, helicopters, news coverage, property destruction, and more. This movie was way too big for such a small story. The “bigger is better” idea didn’t work on screen either, as the movie was nowhere near as good as the first.

After the events of the first film, we see the family two years later, with mom and dad having a more stable relationship. The new issue on the horizon is Wayne’s work. He’s having problems with one of the managers, who seems more interested in making the new “make stuff big” project work without Wayne’s involvement.
They’re running into challenges at work, and Wayne, who now has a new baby in the picture—two-year-old Adam, who loves breaking things as he explores his surroundings—wants to figure out what’s going on.

Wayne breaks into his lab at work to see what’s causing the issues with the new “make big” ray the company is so invested in. While testing the machine on Adam’s favorite stuffed animal, things don’t go as planned. Adam, wanting his toy back, crawls/walks to where the bunny was placed. As his father is absent-mindedly focused on something else, Adam gets hit by the ray.

Things don’t take effect until Adam finds himself in front of something emitting electromagnetic flux, which makes him grow bigger than normal. The situation gets worse when they get home and have to deal with mom.

The movie wasn’t a critical or commercial success like the first film, making just over $70 million at the box office. This made Disney decide not to risk releasing the third movie in theaters, opting instead for a direct-to-video release.


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