Honey, I Blew Up the Kid

Honey, I Blew Up the Kid is the 1992 sequel to the 1989 film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Directed by Randal Kleiser and released by Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars Rick Moranis who reprises his role as Wayne Szalinski.

Also returning from the first film are Marcia Strassman as Wayne's wife, Diane, and their previously shrunken son Nick, who is again performed by Robert Oliveri. Newcomer Keri Russell is Mandy the babysitter who was supposed to be watching Adam but now is the one being watched by him who holds her and his older brother captive in his overalls' pocket. The antagonist to Wayne and his family is Dr. Charles Hendrickson (John Shea), who wants the giant baby stopped at all costs and would like to take over Wayne's invention that is now owned by the major corporation they work for.

This film would be followed by one last sequel in 1997, this time a direct-to-video film, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. A TV show would also follow the film in 1997, called Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show.

Synopsis
It's been three years since "nutty" professor Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) shrunk his kids. He and his family have now relocated from California to Nevada and have welcomed a new son into the family, 2½-year-old Adam. His wife, Diane, is going to help their daughter, Amy (Amy O'Neill) get settled in at college, for which she is departing. As Diane is gone, Wayne is supposed to look after Adam and their oldest son, Nick (Robert Oliveri).

Nick has matured since the last film. He is more interested in guitars and has a liking for a girl he meets at his job, Mandy Park, although she doesn't feel the same way. Wayne takes Adam and Nick to his job as Sterling Labs, where he is the head of a project, even though Dr. Charles Hendrickson (John Shea) is trying to take over the project. Wayne begins to experiment with an idea on a machine that can make objects grow. He uses Adam's toy, Big Bunny, as the test subject. As something goes wrong while Wayne and Nick are distracted, Adam gets out of his stroller and gets in the way of the machine and is zapped. Suddenly, the machine breaks.

Later on, Adam begins to grow via electric waves from the microwave. Wayne and Nick try to take him back to the lab, but are stopped by Hendrickson. Diane (Marcia Strassman) comes back home from Amy's college, and is shocked to find her toddler 7 ft tall. Wayne and Diane drive to a warehouse to find Wayne's original shrink ray to shrink Adam back to regular size. While Nick watches Adam at the house, the babysitter Mandy Park (Keri Russell) comes by. After Nick explains to her what happened, Adam is then exposed to the television set and breaks through the walls of the house and is loose on the streets, now 14 ft tall. Nick and Mandy begin to search for him through the town.

At the warehouse, Wayne and Diane search for the shrink ray through tons of crates. They finally find it and leave to return home. Hendrickson finds out about the "big baby" and reports it to his boss, Clifford Sterling (Lloyd Bridges). Hendrickson and law enforcers contain Adam in a truck after finding him. Wayne and Diane return home with the shrink ray, only to find them gone. Adam breaks through the truck while he is 50 ft tall. Meanwhile, Sterling realizes what a good man Wayne is, fires Hendrickson and gives his support to Wayne and Diane to shrink their baby to normal size. Wayne suddenly discovers that Adam grows while he is near electricity, and Marshall Brooks tells him that Adam is headed straight for Las Vegas. After finding him, Nick and Mandy are mistaken for toys and he puts them in his pocket.

Now 112 ft tall, Adam begins roaming the streets of Las Vegas. The citizens and visitors of Las Vegas are stunned to see the gigantic baby in Godzillaesqe manner, but Adam seems to think that the likes of "Vegas Vic" and all the neon lights are some kind of playground for him. Wayne and Diane arrive in time with Sterling, but there is still a problem; Adam needs to stand still for twelve seconds for the shrink ray to work. In an effort to keep him still, Diane gets Wayne to enlarge her with the shrink ray; although Adam will listen to his parents, as he 'knows' that his mother is bigger than him, he will not register her at his current size. Meanwhile, Adam has approached a Hard Rock Cafe and rips off the guitar from its sign. Hendrickson arrives via helicopter and proceeds to shoot Adam with tranquilizer cartridges. The first shot misses Adam, but the second hits the guitar, giving Adam a painful electrocuting shock, to which he starts crying. As everyone watches in sympathy for Adam's sadness, Diane (now enlarged) stops Hendrickson (and his pilot, who is only too glad as he never wanted to participate), and prevents Adam being knocked out. She holds him still, and Wayne shrinks the both of them to normal size.

Afterwards, Hendrickson makes an excuse for shooting Adam, saying that the tranquilizer cartridges would not mean to hurt him, but Diane punches him out. Meanwhile, Nick, now shrunk again during the experiment, finally wins Mandy's heart. Adam is excited to see his Big Bunny over fifty feet tall outside the house. As Wayne and Diane share a kiss, the credits roll.

Production
The film was, at first, not supposed to be a sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Originally titled Big Baby, it was about a young toddler who grew to giant size by a freak accident involving a growth ray and eventually terrorized Las Vegas in a violent, yet Godzillaesqe way. Disney saw the possibilities of making this into a follow up to Honey and rewrote the script to movie. Where as most of the characters from Big Baby were rewritten as characters from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, there was no character that could take the place of Amy Szalinski, Wayne and Diane's eldest child and only daughter, portrayed by Amy O'Neill. Instead of excluding her character from the story, Amy is going away to college in the beginning of the film.

Casting
Rick Moranis returns from the original film to portray "wacky" inventor Wayne Szalinski. Also returning is Wayne's wife, Diane, who is portrayed by Marcia Strassman. Amy O'Neill and Robert Oliveri return to portray the Szalinski children, Amy and Nick. Nick has matured in his personality and interests since the last film. He is still considered "nerdy", but has taken more interest in girls and guitars.

The casting director was Renee Rousselot. She searched in a sea of 1,100 small children for someone to portray the newest addition in the Szalinski clan, Adam. She searched for mostly three to four year old boys because casting a younger child might have been difficult, since they were supposed to carry the film's $32 million dollar budget. Rousselot came across two young twins, Daniel and Joshua Shalikar, from New Jersey and immediately cast them in December 1990. One twin would act in the morning, while the other one was eating lunch or taking a nap. Baby consultant Elaine Hall Katz and director Randal Kleiser would plan the twins' scenes a week in advance. Tom Smith reported that, "On his own, Dan was almost too adventuresome to repeat one move, and Josh seemed very cautious. Put them together and they could do anything." However, the film did have difficulties in working with such small children, and one crew member later remarked it was "like playing hopscotch on hot coals". At the time, the Shalikars were scheduled to appear in two more Honey films. They did appear once, but were recast in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.

In the film, Nick has a crush on a girl named Mandy Park. Starring as Mandy is Keri Russell, in her first feature film. John Shea portrays Dr. Charles Hendrickson, who is scheming to get Wayne's control of the project, while Lloyd Bridges portrays Clifford Sterling, the owner of Sterling Labs.

Direction
Randal Kleiser, of Grease and White Fang fame, was chosen to direct this film, replacing Joe Johnston. Kleiser would return to film with the cast in the 3D show, Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, which was at several Disney parks until 2010. Like Grease, Honey I Blew Up the Kid had animated opening credits.

Production began on June 17, 1991. Filming took place in Vista Del Mar, Nevada for the parts involving the Szalinski's house. Also used extensively was well known places in Las Vegas such as the Hard Rock Cafe and the Mirage Hotel. The water park where Nick worked and where Mandy is first introduced is Wet 'n Wild in the Las Vegas area. It closed in 2004, twelve years after the film.

Special effects were used heavily throughout the film, but some were not. When Adam knocks down his room's door, production designer Leslie Dilley created a set with miniature furniture about four feet away from the camera, while the adult actors would be about fifteen feet away. Kleiser recalled, "Danny was generally better at improvising and fresh reactions. Josh was better at following directions, so we would alternate."

Lawsuit
Disney would later find itself the subject of a lawsuit as a result of the film, brought on by a game show announcer who had also done screenplays and came up with the idea of an oversized toddler after babysitting his granddaughter and watching her topple over building blocks. His screenplay had been reviewed but never made into a movie, and it was titled "Now, That's a Baby!". Disney eventually settled out of court. The script had a few different ideas though. One was the baby was to be a little girl instead, who became gigantic as a result of a genetic experiment instead of a ray machine. Her parents were scientists desperately finding some way to change her back. The antagonist in the script was not a coworker, but instead a hawkish military officer who seeks to eliminate the gigantic little girl by deploying a missile battery against her, arguing with Washington that she will ruin all cities if left unchecked, but also seeking it to be his one chance to be hailed as a hero.

Box office
The film opened on July 17, 1992 to 2,492 theatres, almost twice as many as the first film. It was #1 on opening weekend with $11,083,318, and grossed $58,662,452 in the U.S.

Critical
The film had generally mixed reviews. It has a "rotten" rating of 40% at Rotten Tomatoes. Desson Thompson and Hal Hinson, both writers from the Washington Post, agreed that the film was "a one-joke film." Roger Ebert, from the Chicago Times, said that Adam "didn't participate in the real world but simply toddled around."

Soundtrack
Intrada Records released the record in 1992, in time for the film's release. The film's score was performed by Bruce Broughton, who would return to perform the score for Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. "Stayin Alive" by the Bee Gees appears in the film. So does "Loco-Motion" by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

With 15 tracks, it was originally conducted at the London Symphony Orchestra.

Track listing

 * 1) "Main Title" – 3:03
 * 2) "To the Lab" – 1:53
 * 3) "Adam Gets Zapped" – 0:35
 * 4) "Putting on Weight?" – 1:19
 * 5) "Macrowaved" – 3:15
 * 6) "How'd She Take It?" – 3:11
 * 7) "Sneaking Out" – 1:12
 * 8) "Don't Touch That Switch!" – 0:26
 * 9) "The Bunny Trick" – 2:41
 * 10) "Get Big Bunny" – 4:11
 * 11) "Clear The Streets!" – 3:00
 * 12) "Car Flight" – 4:38
 * 13) "Ice Cream!" – 3:47
 * 14) "Look At That Mother!" – 2:26
 * 15) "That's All, Folks!" – 4:20