It’s religious.”) is heartbreakingly real. James, a pre-Giuliani Times Square clean-up flophouse (which Billy assures him is OK because, you know, “St. The fear expressed in his mannerisms and facial expressions when he finds himself alone in the St. The physical humor is spot-on and the situational comedy is well-crafted without pandering, but it’s the emotion Hanks is able to convey that convinces the viewer to completely buy in. Hanks, in a dry spell somewhere between his big screen debut in Splash and his critical acclaim from Philadelphia, is a thoroughly convincing 13 year-old.
BIG ELIZABETH PERKINS AND TOM HANKS MOVIE
And that innocence protects him from the corporate politics in the form of the just-threatening-enough John Heard, saves Elisabeth Perkins’ love interest Susan from the pitfalls of big business yuppy-dom, and restores company owner Robert Loggia’s faith in why he got into the toy making business in the first place.īig is the kind of movie that is sold to a studio on its premise, but bought by the public on the performance of the main character. The brilliance of the script is how it illustrates Josh’s loss of childhood, but not his loss of innocence in a Chance the Gardener kind of way. In order to survive in the city until the carnie machine can be located, Josh puts his late ’80s computer prowess to work as a data entry clerk at MacMillan Toys.
Thinking his grown version is a home-invader, his mom (played by Mercedes Ruehl) chases him out of the house and he heads to New York City with his best friend Billy in an attempt to find a way to reverse the spell. When 13-year-old Josh’s wish to be big is granted by a Zoltar Speaks carnival machine overnight, his life is thrown into turmoil. With Big, Ross, who would go on to adapt the screenplay for and direct Seabiscuit, and Spielberg (yes, Steven’s little sister) provide a solid first-ever attempt at scriptwriting that is ruled as much by emotion as it is by its comedic queues. The first of this spat of body swap movies to be greenlit by a studio, and the last to make it to the screen, Big has the distinction of being the only one of the bunch nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Writing, Original Screenplay for Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg, and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Hanks. The diversity of the actors involved (Dudley Moore, Kirk Cameron, Judge Reinhold, Fred Savage, George Burns, Charlie Schlatter, and Tom Hanks) provide an interesting cross-section of late ’80s popular culture, but none of these films are memorable enough to warrant anything more than a line item on the actor’s IMDb profile or a mocking nod on VH1’s indulgent I Love the ’80s series.Įxcept Big. Like Father Like Son set off the run of releases in October 1987, then from March through June 1988, Vice Versa, 18 Again, and Big were unleashed in quick succession. The movie-going public was inundated with body-switching films at the end of the ’80s.
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