Tom Hanks outdid himself in this charmingly winsome tale of magic and betrayal. The story is about a thirteen year old named Josh who's sick of being a pathetic little looser kid with no prospects and zero control over his life. A mystical wish-granting machine turns him into an adult, and upon finding himself a thirty-something the next day he flees his home and life to take on New York and find the mysterious box that did this to him in the first place. Not before leaving his mother convinced he's been abducted, of course, leaving her a terrified wreck and perpetually worried sick over his absence, often for weeks at a time in lieu of his sporadic contact with her. He sends a solitary letter penned in his own hand briefly telling her "they're treating me well" and makes a single phonecall to tell her in a detached, casual way that he has indeed abducted her son (himself), but not to worry, because Josh is in no danger and perfectly healthy. And no, you can't talk to him.
The parts where Tom Hanks is dancing on a massive light-up keyboard and jumping on a trampoline are all well and good, but there's this sort of bewilderingly dark undercurrent the movie does its best to gloss over. In order for this movie to work, his mother had to be positive some huge drooling home-invading reprobate had stolen her son and was doing God knows what with him for a month plus. He never made any demands, so she could only assume his motives were self-evident. Could we have done this movie without totally ruining his parents' lives? I'd like to see the extended cut where his family weeps at his feet thanking him for coming home, and he suddenly realizes the gravity of what he's done.
I understand why the movie ended so simply, of course. Nobody wants to see this kid lying his ass off to teachers and neighbors and family while they haul him to therapists and police stations where strangers administer blood tests and rape kits while everyone around him falls to pieces thanking God almighty he's been returned. I'd be curious to see the outcome of the ongoing police investigation when the dawdling freak everyone in the McMillan toy company has been calling Josh turns out to be a kidnapping pederast and every good thing he thought he'd done comes crashing down around his ears permanently marring every life he's touched. All those adults who spoke with him as an equal now cursing his name and treating the thirteen year old Josh like a wounded child and hapless victim...
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I can't help but see the big picture (no pun intended) and all the people this kid hurt. What happens to his apartment? It's just left to rot? What about all the meddling he did in company policy, and the relationship he broke up only to vanish on that poor woman who invested all that time and energy in him? I'm not saying it's believable that this would have occurred as a serious problem to the kid in the movie, but it should have ocurred to the screenwriter. This story could have happened however they wanted. Why do it in this desolate way?
It's an easy movie to get swept away in (clearly) and the good Mr. Hanks did a fantastic job emulating thirteen year olds at large. The movie did a wonders in reminding the viewer what effect the world has on children and the effect children have on adults. I think the message here is that if more people paid more attention to the thoughts and ideas of young people the world would be a better place, because a child's unique perspective is usually much clearer and to the point than the adults around them. As official grown-ups our views have (by and large) been skewed to accomidate mitigating factors we've learned to automatically compensate for. Without accepting these learned boundaries we're capable of so much more. I wish when I was a teen I'd been given the opportunity to learn in a hands-on, practical way in a job setting. With a little allowance for adjustment I'm sure I could have learned a lot more marketable skills than what I have now, but instead I feel crippled by a system that was put into place essentially to keep me busy and out of trouble (neither of which it effectively did) until I society decided I was old enough to contribute.
My father used to use the old "If this were a hundred years ago, you'd have a family and a farm by now!" line on me. I remember thinking to myself that in any society that made any kind of sense, I would. I'd be given the opportunity to take a shot at living. I'd have independence and responsibility and a clear direction. Instead I get held by the hand in a classroom and walked through eighty different kinds of bullshit that I knew then and am positive now did not matter, whatsoever. I didn't take things seriously at that age because there was nothing to take seriously. Young people are truly capable of so much when given the opportunity to adjust. The tragedy, of course, is that they are denied that opportunity, as the rigidity of what we've made the business world today makes the smallest error unacceptable and the largest, policy.
Elizabeth Perkins (Susan, in the movie, Big's female lead) is now and will always be defined to me by her role in Weeds, and I feel like she's so good at that dagger's edge driven bitch character she was trapped inside it long ago, and I'm glad. I don't want to see her range, or goodness, or any kind of talent spectrum whatsoever. She is absolutely hilarious doing exactly what I've seen her doing and I won't ever get tired of it. Big gave me everything I asked for, but rewatching it as an adult brought up some strange questions that never occurred to me as a child.
Watch Big.
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