BIG (1988)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Penny Marshall

SCREENWRITER: Gary Ross, Anne Spielberg

FILM STARS: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Robert Loggia, John Heard, David Moscow, David Moscow, Jared Rushton, Jon Lovitz, Mercedes Ruehl, Harvey Miller

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: B.B. Hiller and Neil W. Hiller

TYPE: Novelisation

PUBLISHER: Star

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1988

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1988

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Comedy

WORDS: It’s hard to dislike Tom Hanks but I think it’s hard to love him as well. He is just there. Despite his Oscars, which came out of the blue, though playing victims and outsiders (a gay lawyer suffering from AIDS in Philadelphia (1993) and a character bullied because of his physical disability and low intelligence in Forrest Gump (1994)) are roles the Academy loves.

He has become good box office, well known but not iconic.

He is the equivalent of Dana Andrews, Van Heflin, Walter Pigeon, (perhaps) Frederic March but with more longevity at the top.

Perhaps, non-film buffs may struggle to recall these actors but in their day they were very popular. And that is my point with Hanks … I’m not convinced a cult or following will develop around him.

What is surprising is that Hanks started out in comedy. He isn’t the first light comedian to leave comedy for drama but he is one that has rarely returned to the broad comedy of his youth.

From his TV sitcom Bosom Buddies (1980-1982) through Bachelor Party (1984), Splash (1984), Volunteers (1985), The Money Pit (1986) his career was unremarkable in that bland 1980s unremarkable way. But, each film made money a lot of money. And then Big (1988) made even more money … it was a big (sic) hit ($151 million return on a $18 million budget). Hanks continued in the broad comedy, broad rom com style until his Oscars and lead in Saving Private Ryan (1998) tuned his career to drama from which he has rarely departed from since.

Fantasyland Hollywood naturally enough likes fantasies and here in Big we have one the ones that crops up regularly every few years or so … that is the supernatural age / body changing plot where an adult enters a child’s body and vice versa, or a woman enters a man’s body and vice versa (recent developments in gender identity may have made that later film redundant).

Here a pre-teen boy makes a wish in front of a magical antique fortune-teller machine that he wants to be big (older) … and he gets his wish.

The Italian film Da grande (1987) has been said to be the inspiration for Big, and seems to be as the stories are virtually identical.  This is likely as Hollywood at the time was going through a stage of adapting European hits for American / English speaking audiences – The Toy (1982), The Man Who Loved Women (1983), The Woman in Red (1984), Crackers (1984), Blame It on Rio (1984), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Happy New Year (1987), The Birdcage (1996) were all based on successful European films.

But the story itself is not unusual. Turnabout (1940) was perhaps the first body change fantasy, but  Freaky Friday (1976) and All of Me (1984) were hits in the “genre” later. There was a glut of similar films in the late 80s – Big (1988), Like Father Like Son (1987), 18 Again! (1988), Vice Versa (1988) and 14 Going on 30 (1988), Dream a Little Dream (1989).

And they didn’t stop there Prelude to a Kiss (1992), Freaky Friday (1995), Dating the Enemy (1996), The Hot Chick (2002), Freaky Friday (2003), It’s a Boy Girl Thing (2006), All Screwed Up (2009), The Change-Up (2011), Jumanji: The Next Level” (2019), Freaky (2020), Family Switch (2023) all continued the theme. Never say die, just rehash for new audiences.

You get the picture.

The films can be funny because you get to see a character who don’t suffer a mental illness play split roles whether they be old /young, male / female.

The fun in the former category and in Big is the older viewers get to watch people their age act and behave as kids, which, usually, is a time when life was easier and the world hadn’t cast a shadow over the simple joys in life.

Characters struggle through familiar situations and everyone comes out a little wiser and more sympathetic to their body change by the end.

Screenwriter Gary Ross had the knack for writing pleasant bland films like Dave (1993) and Lassie (1994) before graduating to writing and directing the bland but pleasant, err Pleasantville (1998) as well as the less pleasant but equally bald Seabiscuit (2003), The Hunger Games (2012), Free State of Jones (2012), Ocean’s 8 (2018). Surprised you won’t be. Co-screenwriter Anne Spielberg is the younger sister of film director Steven Spielberg and produced (including Big) more than wrote.

Penny Marshall (Laverne from TV sitcom Laverne and Shirley) directs with a TV sitcom style light touch on a script which misses not opportunities and hits all the obvious targets and gags. The supports are good but they are supports. Hanks is the whole show. And he carries it well – he is self assured and captures the child in an adult’s body very well, though even now some of the romantic set ups are a little cringy.

Big (1988) perhaps anticipates his simple man in a man’s body in Forrest Gump but otherwise there is no indication of the Oscars that were to come … as obvious as they were.

Hanks is often compared to James Stewart which is stupid because Stewart’s range is much wider than Hanks. Having said that Stewart played some wide-eyed young men and could have done Big in the 30s or 40s though he would never have been as broad or as childlike as Hanks’ character. And that is perhaps, because the pre-teen from the 1980s and the preteen from the 1940s have little in common , maturity or otherwise, apart from their ages.

The novelisation was by Neil Hiller who collaborated on it with his wife B.B. Hiller. They also published author of children’s books and young adult books as well as at least one other novelisation (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)).  B.B. had the more prolific solo career with young adult novels and novelisations for The Karate Kid (1984), The Karate Kid 2 (1986), Superman IV (1987), Ghostbusters II (1989), The Karate Kid 3 (1989), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993), The Next Karate Kid (1994) and others.

No need to read the book.

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