I don’t wish to sound old and out-of-touch but streaming services aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be. Don’t get me wrong, I love them all. I am currently subscribed to Disney+, Netflix, Prime, and Now TV. That’ so many hours of content to pick from. However, that also means I no longer rewatch films as much. There are just so many options that it sort of seems like a waste to watch something you’ve already seen. That’s the great thing about when you only have VHS and DVDs to pick from. How many times did you ruin a video because you’d watched it so many times. My twin sister and I watched the same selection of films endlessly when we were younger. We’d quote lines and never get sick of seeing the same thing. Now, I so rarely watch a film a second time. This is a golden age of content but it also feels kind of limiting. So, now that I’m reviewing two films a week (at least for now), I figured it was a good time to start going back to old classics. And why not start with a childhood favourite?

It’s entirely possible that I saw this film before I ever watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I can’t be sure of that because my memory is abysmal but I definitely have a much stronger awareness of the sequel. We owned a copy of Honey, I Blew up the Kid and we blood loved it. There are so many stupid lines that would always make us giggle. Mostly coming from Adam, the kid of the title. After all, what could be better than letting a small child run around pretending to be a giant baby? Well, adding Rick Moranis into the mix is never a bad thing. As a kid, I only really knew him from other terrible 90s kids movies. Well basically just The Flintstones and Little Giants. I definitely didn’t see him at his best until I was a little older but he did always seemed like a fun guy.

In hindsight, this film owes a lot to its main star because, from a narrative point of view, there’s not much to go on. This film is painfully one-note. It’s almost 90s minutes of “oh, the baby got bigger” over and over. You can see how desperately the writers had to work to drag the whole thing out for long enough. The solution to the problem is simple as Rick’s character, Wayne Szalinski, already owns a working shrink ray. So, all we’re doing is wasting time until he can shrink the kid again. And, unlike the first one, it’s not as if he has to spend any time actually searching for the baby as he’s pretty hard to miss. Instead, this is a film of sight gags and humour derived from watching a baby play with huge objects as though they were toys.

Not that it’s not an enjoyable film but I think this is definitely one of those times that owes a lot to nostalgia. I haven’t watched this film for years and it’s always fun to go back to something like this. I have happy memories of watching this when I was younger and it does remind of those days having fun with my sister. Is it actually a good film in hindsight? No, but I think 90s kid’s movies just didn’t try as hard as they do now. There was less pressure on trying to make them good and more interest in making them simple. This is a film that grew out of an exciting idea but that never really tried to push further with it. It was quite happy to just become a film about a big baby that didn’t really cause any problems. And it’s not that bad.

What I do have to say is that the way this film was made is impressive. I know that its nothing compared to current technology but, for a film that came out in 1992, this still looks amazing. Yes, there are scenes that look slightly more fake than the rest but, for the most part, this looks pretty convincing. Something that was also the case with the first film. They might not have spent much time on the story but somebody did care about how it looked. I’m happy to say that, despite its weaknesses, watching this film in 2021 hasn’t completely ruined my memories of it.