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We are back for another ride with the Szalinkski family in their wild adventures with Wayne's wild inventions. I hadn't seen this film in a long time so I was curious how it held up in terms of story and effects work to my original viewing back in 1992. I was surprised to find that the matte shots and miniature work fell into the catagories of "really bad" and "pretty good".
In this new installment the Szalinkski family now resides in the Nevada suburbs with an addition to the family, 2 year-old Adam Szalinkski (played by twins Daniel and Joshua Shalikar). Amy Szalinkski is now off to College while Nick is home helping with the daily care of young Adam. Wayne now consults for a large company that is developing an enlarging machine that doesn't seem to work. Wayne is constantly reassuring the family that he will fix the playpen that Adam continually escapes from but throughout the beginning of the film we see Adam constantly out and about getting into trouble. This is only the beginning as Wayne tries to fix the enlarging machine at work he brings along Adam and Nick only to accidentally zap Adam who later begins to grow gradually until he is the size of King Kong. The adventure takes us outside where Adam continues to grow and get into all kinds of mischief in the local countryside. Wayne and Nick are joined by the babysitter, Mandy Park (played by Kerri Russell) and Diane Szalinkski (again played by Marcia Strassman) while chasing down the giant Adam and trying to figure out a way to bring him back to normal size. Wayne gets his original shrinking machine out of mothballs and decides to use it to try and shrink Adam back to proper height. The finale takes place in Downtown Las Vegas where Adam plays with real cars, and giant guitars as if they were toys.
Relating to a giant 2-year-old is not something I found very stimulating or interesting beyond the effects used to pull off many of the shots. The only real relationship developing here was the one between Nick and the babysitter while being carried around in one of Adams pockets as he stomps down the road, but it was very thin and not engaging. The sense of danger also noticeably absent from the film made it harder to stay awake. Yes there was the obvious risk of being stepped on by giant Adam, but not enough to make it particularly interesting to watch.
VIDEO: You are NOT given a choice with this film. It's only available in a Pan & Scan Full Screen version. The colors are a bit muted and the picture lacks any real sharpness. There is also a noticeable amount of dust and even some spots on the film that they failed to clean up. Artifacts are noticeable throughout. While I don't like seeing DVDs released with such bad production value, I think the first film, "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" is far more deserving of better treatment.
AUDIO: Quality is fairly dull and lacks any punch in this 5.1 Dolby Digital track. Beyond your basic ambience, the surrounds are not engaged with this mix, and the LFE channel is very subtle. The center channel is well seperated from the left and right front for dialog.
MENUS: The menu designs are static and typical of low budget production.
BONUS MATERIALS: Absolutely none.
Summary: If you have very young kids then I would recommend renting it, but you will be much better off with the original "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", or the newer "Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves" which are far more engaging and fun. |
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