Attack of the 50 Foot Baby
I sort of liked "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" it made me laugh a little but never really wowed me and I expected the same of the sequel "Honey I Blew Up the Kid". And to be honest I pretty much got the same, some laughs but it never got to the point of either wowing or really amusing me. In fact "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" feels like a good idea for a movie but wasted because everything about it is so obvious. Yes, I know that "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" is a children's movie but the cleverness to appeal to adults is totally ignored in favour of simple jokes which will appeal to younger audiences and no one else.
After he accidentally shrunk his children Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis - Parenthood) and family have moved town and now finds himself working for the big Sterling corporation on a machine to make things bigger. But his immediate boss dislikes the wackiness of Wayne and having gotten his ideas decides to stop him from working on the experiments. But before he is stopped Wayne accidentally manages to zap his youngest, baby Adam (Daniel Shalikar & Joshua Shalikar) and before he knows it baby Adam is a big baby on the way to Las Vegas. With his wife Diane (Marcia Strassman) and son Nick (Robert Oliveri - Edward Scissorhands) as well as Mandy (Keri Russell) the baby sitter they must try and find a way to stop Adam and reverse the enlargement process. But how do you stop a baby which is 50 foot tall?
The way "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" follows on from "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" is quite nice, it doesn't waste time with too much explanation but delivering enough so we understand where the Szalinski's are at and with their children growing up the focus shifts to baby Adam. What follows is in many ways classic Disney with corporate bad guys, the hapless whacky Wayne and the accident which leads to baby Adam becoming the big baby. This means we get plenty of slapstick fun as not only does Wayne, Diane and Nick try to not only control Adam but reverse what happened whilst the bad guys try to basically do the dirty on Wayne. And thrown in for good measure is a bit of teen romance for the nerdy Nick and Mandy the babysitter.
The most annoying thing for me is that whilst all the jokes, the wackiness of Szalinski's inventions and Big Baby Adam making his way to Las Vegas and innocently terrorizing the place in a Godzilla sort of way will probably make younger audiences, under 10s, laugh there is nothing to appeal to adults who find themselves watching it. Not that there isn't plenty of opportunity to throw a few gags in for adults or deliver some clever dialogue with double meaning but there is barely anything just one rather lame gag about a mother.
And it has to be said that whilst special effects of 1992 are nothing like those used in the movies these days those one show in "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" are rather tacky. Now maybe this was intentional, the fake ness of Adam as a 50 Foot Baby could have been in homage to the old B-movies but the result is that it makes "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" look cheap, made in a hurry to capitalize on the popularity of the first movie.
As with the first movie many of the jokes are left for Rick Moranis to deliver and to be honest he does quite well with what for me is quite slim material. The trouble is that the jokes are repetitive and it even feels like Moranis's heart wasn't fully in it by the time the movie ended. The energy and enthusiasm seemed to have gone walk about and that is the same for all the cast including Marcia Strassman, Robert Oliveri and Keri Russell who made her movie debut as baby sitter Mandy Park.
What this all boils down to is that "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" is once more a fun movie but it never got me really laughing. The jokes and the whole storyline will most likely appeal to younger audiences but the lack of jokes to appeal to older audiences who find themselves sitting through this is a big negative. But once again it is an inoffensive movie with absolutely nothing in the slight bit scary or risque when deciding whether it is suitable for children to watch.
