Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Honey, I Blew Up The Kid
Of course everyone involved in the making of a major motion picture hopes it will be successful. But it’s fair to say that no one at Disney expected Honey, I Shrunk The Kids to be as popular as it turned out to be. The movie came out of nowhere to become the fifth highest grossing film of 1989, earning more than expected blockbusters like Back To The Future Part II and Ghostbusters II. As a result, it was inevitable that Wayne Szalinski would join the ranks of such esteemed Disney eggheads as Ned Brainard, Merlin Jones and Dexter Riley in Sequel-Land.
The one person who may have believed in the original film’s sequel chances was co-writer and original director Stuart Gordon. Around the same time as he was putting together Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, he came across a completely unrelated script called Big Baby written by Garry Goodrow and Peter Elbling, former members of the San Francisco-based improv group The Committee. Gordon liked the script, a parody/homage of ‘50s sci-fi monster movies like The Amazing Colossal Man, and optioned it as either an alternative idea or a potential sequel.
Once Disney decided, “Yes, we’d like a sequel very much now, please,” Gordon reminded them of Big Baby. Its premise, a two-year-old grows to Godzilla-proportions following an accident, was essentially the reverse of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. The studio agreed with Gordon about the script’s potential and hired Thom Eberhardt to rewrite it for the Szalinski family. Eberhardt had written and directed the cult sci-fi comedy Night Of The Comet and had recently directed the med school dramedy Gross Anatomy, the first of two pictures he’d helm for Touchstone.
Although he’d had to bow out of directing the first film, Disney asked Gordon if he’d be interested in taking on the sequel. Stuart Gordon hadn’t exactly vaulted onto the A-list. In the years since the original movie had come out, Gordon had directed two movies, Robot Jox and The Pit And The Pendulum, for producer Charles Band’s Empire Pictures and its successor, Full Moon Features. Both good movies but made for a fraction of the budget (and the audience) of a Disney picture. But Gordon had realized that he valued creative autonomy over everything else and knew he wasn’t likely to get that on this project. He diplomatically declined the offer, retaining an executive producer credit along with producing partner Albert Band, Charles’s father.
To produce the film, Disney hired Dawn Steel, who had recently stepped down as President of Columbia Pictures. Steel’s original background was in marketing. She’d been the head of Paramount’s marketing division at the time of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and been instrumental in creating the media tie-in blitzkrieg surrounding it. She’d later become head of production at Paramount before moving over to Columbia, becoming the first woman to run a Hollywood studio. Unfortunately, Columbia was struggling following its acquisition by Coca-Cola and the tenure of David Puttnam. Steel was unable to turn the ship around and, when Coke sold the business to Sony, she resigned. Now that she was out of the executive suite, she wanted to get into the trenches of production.
Steel and Disney hired Jeremiah Chechik to direct based on the success of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Chechik had big, ambitious plans for the movie. Indeed, his vision for the film was considerably bigger than anything Disney had in mind. As Chechik’s proposed budget got higher and higher, the studio decided to let him go. Concerned that Steel hadn’t been able to reign in her director, they also brought in another producer. Edward S. Feldman had been producing since the early ‘70s, earning an Oscar nomination for Peter Weir’s Witness (made for Paramount during Steel’s time at the studio). Feldman had also recently made a couple of movies for Touchstone, Green Card (also directed by Weir) and The Doctor, so he was already familiar with Disney’s operations.
It didn’t take long for the studio to line up a replacement director who was also familiar with how things worked. Randal Kleiser had performed pinch-hitting duties once before, taking over White Fang after the departure of Chris Menges. He also knew a thing or two about visual effects, thanks to his work on Flight Of The Navigator. Kleiser hadn’t necessarily meant to become Disney’s go-to guy for eleventh hour replacements but he knew how to stick to a schedule and a budget.
A few things have changed for the Szalinski family since they shrunk the kids. Wayne (Rick Moranis) has sold his shrink-ray to Sterling Labs and relocated to a suburb just outside of Las Vegas. Consequently, the neighboring Thompson family is now out of the picture but otherwise, the gang's all here, including Wayne's formerly estranged wife Diane (Marcia Strassman), daughter Amy (Amy O'Neill) and son Nick (Robert Oliveri). Well, almost. Poor Amy is stuffed into a taxi and whisked away to college in the film's opening minutes, never to be seen again.
Wayne and Diane seem to have put their marital problems behind them and have even had another baby, Adam (played by twins Daniel and Joshua Shalikar). But apart from all that, not much has changed for the Szalinskis. Wayne is still filling their home with elaborate contraptions that mostly work. He also continues to have trouble being taken seriously at work, especially by his conniving colleague Dr. Hendrickson (John Shea), despite the fact that he's invented 100% more operational shrink-rays than the rest of them put together. Meanwhile, Nick has begun taking an interest in girls, particularly Adam's occasional babysitter, Mandy (Keri Russell, graduating from the all-star cast of The All New Mickey Mouse Club to her feature film debut).
While Diane escorts Amy out of the movie and off to college, Wayne gets some bad news at work. The latest test of his enlarging ray, which he missed due to a cloud temporarily incapacitating his solar-powered van, went very poorly. As a result, Hendrickson has decided to kick him off the project entirely. Sure that he can get the machine to work this time, Wayne sneaks into the lab with Nick and Adam on a Saturday. He tests it on Adam’s favorite stuffed animal, Big Bunny, but fails to notice that Adam the escape artist has gone after it and was right behind it during the test.
At first, everything appears to be normal. But it soon becomes apparent that whenever Adam is exposed to electric fields like a microwave or the TV, he experiences a growth surge. By the time Diane returns home early, Adam’s over seven feet tall and just as full of destructive, hyperactive energy as ever. While Wayne and Diane break into Sterling Labs’ warehouse to steal his original shrink-ray, Nick and Mandy do their best to keep Adam safe and subdued. This becomes impossible after another growth surge causes him to break out of the house and rampage around the neighborhood.
Wayne and Diane return home to find the kids have been taken into custody by Hendrickson. Things take another turn with the arrival of Sterling Labs’ owner and CEO, Clifford Sterling (Lloyd Bridges, somewhat surprisingly making his first appearance in a Disney movie, although he had been in the Disney Sunday movie The Thanksgiving Promise, directed by his son Beau). Hendrickson wants Sterling to fire Wayne but Sterling has other ideas. The eccentric millionaire believes in his fellow oddballs and fires Hendrickson instead. While Sterling joins Team Szalinski in their quest to bring Adam down to his normal size, Hendrickson sides with the Lab’s board of directors who want Sterling out. He joins forces with the military to capture Adam by any means necessary.
It quickly becomes apparent that Honey, I Blew Up The Kid is not going to live up to its predecessor. Much of the charm of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids is derived from the interplay between the four mismatched young people as they negotiate the new dangers of their familiar backyard. That’s missing entirely this time around, replaced with a toddler using Las Vegas as a playground. Some of that is kind of fun, like when Adam spins a real car around like an airplane while Nick and Mandy are trapped inside or when he plays air guitar with the Hard Rock Café sign. But far too much of the film focuses on regular people reacting to Adam, rather than letting us have the adventure with him.
The general premise of a toddler the size of an atomic-age monster is one that’s probably better on paper than in practice. As any parent or even friends of parents can tell you, kids are unmanageable and obnoxious at this age. They don’t call them the terrible twos for nothing. Adam is meant to come off as cute and mischievous but more often just seems like the yelling brat in the movie theatre/restaurant/grocery store/airplane making life miserable for everyone. This kid would give you a headache within five minutes at normal size.
Still, the movie’s not quite a total disaster. The special effects vary wildly in quality but are occasionally quite good. Some scenes, like one on an abandoned road on the outskirts of Vegas, nail the ‘50s sci-fi atmosphere of Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman. Rick Moranis is a joy, as always, and it’s always fun to see Lloyd Bridges in full-on kook mode. But the simplicity and character interactions that made the first film so much fun are sorely missed here. It’s proof positive that bigger isn’t always better.
Disney released Honey, I Blew Up The Kid on July 17, 1992. It opened at the top of the box office, raking in over $11 million in its first weekend. But critics weren’t as favorable toward the Szalinskis this time around. However, kids seemed to like it well enough to turn it into a sizable hit. It probably didn’t hurt that there weren’t a whole lot of other movies out there vying for that audience. The rest of the movies in the top five on Honey’s opening weekend skewed older: A League Of Their Own, Boomerang, Universal Soldier and Touchstone’s Sister Act. A couple of weeks later, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven opened and dominated the box office for most of the rest of the summer. By the end of the year, Honey, I Blew Up The Kid had earned over $58 million. Pretty good but not as good as the original.
Perhaps as a result of those diminishing returns, Disney decided to shrink the franchise. The Szalinskis would next appear at Walt Disney World in the attraction Honey, I Shrunk The Audience. Kleiser directed that as well and Moranis, Strassman, Oliveri and the Shalikar boys all returned (Amy was still studying for her midterms, I guess). They were joined by Eric Idle as Dr. Nigel Channing. It was a fun ride that ran in various parks until 2010.
Next, the characters went direct-to-video in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. The first and only directorial effort of the great cinematographer Dean Cundey, this one recast the entire family except Moranis. It was generally considered another step down for the series. Unfortunately, it has also marked Rick Moranis’s final live-action film appearance to date, although we’ll eventually hear from him again in this column.
Disney wasn’t quite through with the franchise, however. In 1997, the imaginatively titled Honey, I Shrunk The Kids: The TV Show debuted in syndication. Peter Scolari took over as Wayne for the TV version. The show ran for three seasons of wacky scientific misadventures. And, at long last, Stuart Gordon finally returned to direct the second season Halloween episode, “Honey, Let’s Trick Or Treat”.
Since then, the Honey franchise has lain dormant, although not for lack of trying. Back in 2020, a reboot simply titled Shrunk was announced that would have brought Rick Moranis out of retirement to costar with Josh Gad as the now-adult Nick. Original director Joe Johnston was even on board to direct the project. All systems were go but then, COVID came along and shut down the whole world. Shrunk was put on the back-burner and it hasn’t come off it since. Whether or not that particular version ever sees the light of day, it seems certain that Disney will eventually return to Wayne and his variably sized kids. When that happens, let’s hope it has more in common with the original than its bigger little brother.
VERDICT: Disney Minus