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Sometimes when we see a film after a gap of a decade or so, we recall the storyline once it’s started, even if we think we have forgotten. But that was not the case with the 1988 film ‘Big’, which we saw just over ten years ago. I did vaguely remember that it was about a boy who wanted to be bigger, but had the plot confused in my mind with other stories along similar lines.
Josh (David Moscow) is twelve when this story opens. He and his best friend Billy (Jared Rushton) like to hang out together, and are just starting to take an interest in girls. Josh is particularly keen on one of the older girls at his school, and is waiting in line next to her at a fairground ride… only to be told he’s not tall enough to go on the ride. He’s embarrassed and angry, and at a rather spooky booth he pays twenty-five cents and makes a wish to be bigger.
His wish is granted rather more drastically than Josh would like. He wakes up the following morning to find that he’s in the body of a thirty-year-old (Tom Hanks). He can’t fit into his clothes, he has hair on his chest and stubble on his chin… and when his mother eventually catches sight of him she is convinced he’s a kidnapper who has taken her son.
Josh manages to persuade Billy that he really is his friend, and Billy - who is rather more streetwise - takes him to New York City, where he stays in a very run-down motel, hoping it will be for no more than one night. Josh is very much a twelve-year-old on the inside still, and very scared of all the noises outside. He misses his family, too.
Unfortunately the documentation they need to find the fairground again is going to take six weeks. So Josh applies for a job testing toys - and is given it, possibly because he doesn’t look like (or behave like) any of the other applicants. And in a series of strange incidents, when he’s acting twelve again, he is promoted to a high level where he needs to design and explain new ideas for toys.
There’s a wonderful scene - the one that I did recall - involving Josh and his boss (Robert Loggia) on a huge digital piano on the floor of a toy store; there are also plenty of other amusing moments. Tom Hanks, despite looking so young in this film, has excellent comic timing, and manages to portray a teenage boy (he celebrates his 13th birthday with Billy) in the body of a thirty-year-old man.
And he also discovers women in ways that are rather unexpected as far as Josh is concerned - and his obsession with one of them causes him to start behaving more like a young man of thirty than an adolescent. The point comes where he has to choose whether to continue in his crazy - but well-paid and luxurious - new life, or see if he can figure out a way to return…
The script is excellent, the acting believable (in the context of a very bizarre storyline) and the whole makes a very enjoyable light comedy which I’d recommend to any adults or teens. There’s nothing overtly sexual or violent, but plenty of kissing, and some implied intimacies. There are also one or two instances of strong language. The rating is PG but it’s unlikely to be of any interest to anyone under the age of about twelve or thirteen.
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