#BIG ELIZABETH PERKINS AND TOM HANKS MOVIE#

This involves fall ass-backwards into a high-level job at a privately-owned toy company, whose owner, MacMillan (Robert Loggia) views Josh's utterly guileless attitude and inability to successfully play-act at being an adult as charming eccentricities that make him an ideal candidate for conceiving exciting new toys. The next morning, he wakes up to find that he has the body of a 30-year-old man (Hanks), and with his mother (Mercedes Ruehl) immediately taking him for a kidnapping housebreaker, he is forced to spend the next several weeks navigating the world of adults until he and his best friend Billy (Jared Rushton) are able to track down the fortune telling machine. It starts from one of the highest concepts of the high-concept '80s: a 12-year-old boy, Josh Baskin (David Moscow), finds a mysterious fortune telling machine at a carnival, and this being the end of a somewhat crummy day of feeling like puberty, growth spurts, and some measure of autonomy can't come soon enough, he wishes to be 'big' (which I don't think would have been the exact phrasing he'd have used if that wasn't the title of the movie, but that's not important). But honestly, I don't know if I remembered that it was a good movie.

I hadn't seen the film in a solid two decades or more before this rewatch, and I would have been willing to agree to a number of largely complimentary things: it's a charming movie. It is to a certain extent the main reason that you are aware of the name of iconic toy retail FAO Schwarz if you live outside of the New York metropolitan area.īut I think the way I'd like to start is by pointing out that Big is, in fact, a pretty good movie.

#BIG ELIZABETH PERKINS AND TOM HANKS MOVIE#

It was a major, major stepping stone in the career of Tom Hanks, who in one swoop earned his first Oscar nomination for acting, and established himself as a beloved, bankable star who could carry a hit movie almost entirely through his shambling charisma. It was the first movie directed by a woman to break $100 million at the box office, as Penny Marshall's second-ever film in that capacity, and the first one where she mostly knew what she was doing (Marshall would also direct the second movie by a woman to break $100 million, 1992's A League of Their Own). box office with $115 million, back when that was still real money).

There are a few different ways one could go about situating Big, one of the biggest hits of 1988 (#4 at the U.S. By no conceivable stretch an original idea, and this seemed like a good time to revisit the most iconic version of the trope. From August 12: Mack & Rita explores the comedic potentials of what happens when a woman wakes up one morning to discover that she's become a much older version of herself.

To wrap up the summer movie season, we'll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to a wide-release film from the last few weeks.

Big elizabeth perkins and tom hanks