From: cbnewsj.cb.att.com!leeper@overmind.mind.org
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Subject: HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID
Date: 23 Jul 92 05:43:00 GMT
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                          HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper

          Capsule review:  Silly but undeniably enjoyable satire
     on 1950s science fiction films has the Szalinski family
     accidentally enlarging their baby to Brobdingnagian
     proportions.  Somewhat better than it really deserves to be.
     Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).  (Relevant diatribe follows the
     review!)

     At the current rate I would expect by the turn of the century the film
industry will have churned out more take-offs, pastiches, and satires of
1950s science fiction films than there were science fiction films made in
the 1950s.  None have ever seemed very good to me, but HONEY, I BLEW UP THE
KID is at least more light-hearted than most.  (Of course, the title may
sound less good-natured than intended, but all the ads make sure everybody
knows in just what sense "blew up" is intended.)  This is, of course, the
sequel to HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS, and though HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID
began life as a script for an unrelated film BIG BABY, it was worked into a
sequel for the previous film.  Actually, it was to have been much the same
plot as THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN with a baby.  Echoes of that film still
abound in the script.

     In the years since the last film, a typical soulless corporation has
taken over Wayne Szalinski's scale-bending projects and is trying to magnify
and reduce objects without much luck.  Rick Moranis as Wayne continues not
to get much respect in spite of being the genius behind it all.  Still, it
is only Wayne that can make things work and even he cannot do exactly what
he wants.  What he accidentally creates is a two-and-a-half-year-old Adam
Szalinski who grows when he passes through electromagnetic flux.
(Conservation of matter?  What's that all about?)  We end up with a ten-
story baby clomping his way through Las Vegas--even the same streets that
Glenn Manning, the COLOSSAL MAN, walked.  This giant, however, is not shot
off of Boulder/Hoover Dam.  There is only a poster of the dam to remind us
of the original.  Incidentally, as well all know, any satire of 1950s
science fiction has to have a small role for either Kenneth Tobey or Dick
Miller.  This time it's Tobey's turn, with him playing a security guard.

     Standards for special effects have come a long way since THE AMAZING
COLOSSAL MAN (special effects in Bert. I. Gordon films were always
particularly bad!).  While in HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID it rarely is
difficult to tell how an effect was created, there are only a few effects
that genuinely look wrong.  The only really bad effect that I noted was a
full-size model of a baby chest and arm in the background.  The arm just
does not move as wildly as it does in the surrounding scenes.  Kudos should
go to the "Baby Wranglers" listed in the credits, since Adam (played by
Daniel and Joshua Shalikas) seems always to do exactly the right thing at
the right time.  And it is true that the fictional Adam and the real life
Shalikas all seem to be extraordinarily well-behaved.

     My rating for this light-hearted piece of summer fluff is +1 on the -4
to +4 scale.

------------------------------- Diatribe -------------------------------
     I noted with some disappointment that the credits of HONEY, I BLEW UP
THE KID acknowledge similarities to the story "The Attack of the Giant Baby"
by Kit Reed.  CINEFANTASTIQUE reports that after Reed saw a promo for the
film she took the Disney organization to court over similarities to her
story.  Actually the Reed story concentrates on the nastier aspects of
babies and shows them magnified.  If, indeed, Reed thinks she invented and
owns the idea of over-size babies getting loose and causing problems in her
1981 story, I might suggest that she read (or re-read) the 1904 novel THE
FOOD OF THE GODS by H. G. Wells.  The mechanism for creating the giant baby
is in the realm of physics in the new movie.  Reed's mechanism is nearly
identical to Wells's.  That is, she has the baby eat a food with fantastic
growth properties.  I seriously doubt that the Wells estate has taken Reed
to court, and I can tell you for a fact that her story bears no similar
acknowledgement to Wells.  Science fiction has been in the past a field
where people could feel free to play with others' ideas and put new twists
on them.  But I suppose as long as some people in the field have deep
pockets and other people have greed, that can no longer be the case.  Be it
here noted that the concept of giant babies causing problems has somehow
been transferred from the Wells estate to Reed.  Presumably the concept of
time travel is still the property of the Wells estate.  David Brin probably
owes royalties on uplift to either Wells for THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU or
Nigel Kneale for QUATERMASS AND THE PIT.  Invisibility and alien invasion
again revert to the Wells estate who effectively own a controlling interest
in modern science fiction.  So it goes.

     Mark R. Leeper
     att!mtgzy!leeper
     leeper@mtgzy.att.com
     Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper