Before he was making ghastly romantic comedies with Meg Ryan like You’ve Got Mail or box office bombs such as The Da Vinci Code, Tom Hanks was actually starring in movies that were actually quite good. Having done the comedy gig on Bossom Buddies, Hanks decided to leave television and pursue film, typical for many actors. The film Splash is still a long remembered Hanks classic as is another of his films that is revisiting DVD, Big.

One of the ways that you can tell that Big managed to instill itself into memory is that the film has been referenced and lampooned quite a few times. The Simpsons, The Family Guy and even News Radio have all made references to the film and it has become what is labeled a modern classic. The story here is one that I think everyone can relate to from their youth. Josh Baskin (David Moscow) has had one of the worst experiences of his young life when he is humiliated at a carnival in front of the girl he has a crush on. While sulking, Josh happens to find a fortune telling machine and wishes that he was big. It’s an innocent enough desire, but when Josh wakes up in the morning, he’s now an adult (and Josh is now played of course by Tom Hanks.)

Being big however isn’t exactly how he imagined it would be. Josh is still a twelve year old boy trapped in an adult’s body. His mother thinks he’s a pervert and Josh has no choice but to leave home until he can find the machine that granted his wish. The only person he has managed to convince is his neighbor and best friend, Billy Kopecki (Jared Rushton.) While Billy waits for information pertaining to where the fortune telling machine might be located, Josh takes a computer job at a local toy company but is soon promoted into the research department by his boss and company owner, MacMillan (Robert Loggia.) He’s even managed to gain the attention of one fellow coworker Susan Lawrence (Elizabeth Perkins) and love starts to bloom, but for Josh, no matter how good things get, he still wants to return to himself.

I’m sure just about everyone has wished at some point they were big. I remember being at Great America when I was about 12 or 13 and not being able to ride on some of the more impressive looking roller coasters, the Demon for instance, due to height requirements. That’s the way the film starts out, and we then see that getting the wish can be both a blessing and a curse. As an adult we find that Josh might have the height advantage that he’s wanted, but the problem is that he doesn’t have the life experience to cope with being an adult, and that’s where the humor and charm come into things.

Hanks really does an outstanding job of portraying what is essentially the “little boy lost.” Josh is trying the best he can to fit in, and he’s finding that the adult world does have some advantages. For example, the wages he gets paid might not seem like much to those who have been working at the company, but to a 12-year-old boy, it’s a good deal of money. As Josh moves up in the company, we soon find him getting his own place and filling it with what any young boy would; toys. There’s also a certain naïve quality to Josh for obvious reasons, such as when Susan first wants to come to his place and Josh assumes that she just wants to sleep over. Later there is humor when Josh and Susan finally make their big move and his reaction to her standing there in her bra is priceless.

While Big may not necessarily be a new idea, the film is actually quite similar to Disney’s Freaky Friday in some ways, it’s performance and presentation that really help to make the film memorable. Seeing Hanks acting as a young boy would is really part of the charm of the movie, and the reactions of those around him add a great deal into the movie. We all know exactly what’s going on with Josh, but no one else does, and what we find is that through him, many of his coworkers begin to loosen up a little more. The film however does capture another premise and that is that often, growing up can cause us to loose perspective of our youth, and we find that true of Josh as well. He begins to forget about what has happened after he begins a relationship and is put in charge of developing a toy. Reality however manages to bring him back to Earth, but then another element becomes present in Big, and that would be that of love that simply cannot last due to circumstances.

The basic idea of a DVD being an “extended” edition can conjure up many things. I think all of us has at one point or another bought a DVD with the promise of added scenes to find a mere two or three minutes, but Big is more on the Peter Jackson scale. There are 20 extra minutes added into the movie and you have the option of watching the original, theatrical cut or the new and improved version with plenty of bonus footage. If it’s been a while since you’ve seen the movie, never fear, Fox has included in the scene selection an indication of which sequences are new, much like New Line did with the Lord of the Rings films. The DVD also includes commentary with Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg, the writers of the film.
True to its name, Big is also “big” on the special features. The second DVD in the release comes packed with more bonus material. There is a collection of “deleted scenes,” which have the option of commentary, but these are actually included in the special edition of the film. There are five different featurettes that examine different aspects of the film as it came into being and a collection of TV and theatrical trailers. However, what is not included is the alternate ending which has found its way onto a few foreign releases. Overall however, Big really brings a good collection of bonus material to fans of the movie.

Big undoubtedly will remain a favorite film of many for years to come. This is vintage Tom Hanks at perhaps his best and long before he became the rather bland actor that he has become over the years (though there’s still something appealing about Gump for some reason.) Big appeals to the kid in all of us no matter if it’s the youth wishing and longing to finally be an adult or the adult dreaming of how things were quite a bit simple before having to finally grow up.
 

-mike-
 

Directed by: Penny Marshall   Written by: Gary Ross & Anne Spielberg   Cast: Tom Hanks Elizabeth Perkins Robert Loggia John Heard Jared Rushton David Moscow Jon Lovitz Mercedes Ruehl Josh Clark Kimberlee M. Davis Mark Ballou

DVD Features: Disc 1 Audio: English Stereo, Spanish & French Mono English & Spanish Subtitles Big Brainstorming - An Audio Commentary w/Gary Ross & Anne Spielberg (Theatrical Version Only) Disc 2 Big Beginnings Featurette Chemistry of a Classic Featurette The Work of Play Featurette Hollywood Backstory: Big Carnival Party Newswrap Deleted Scenes w/Optional Commentary TV & Theatrical Trailers