BIG. Directed by Penny Marshall; written by Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg; produced by James L. Brooks and Robert Greenhut for Twentieth Century Fox. Starring Tom Hanks and Elizabeth Perkins. Rated PG (a few sexual references; some vulgar language).
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Bigger isn't always better, to be sure. But Big certainly is. Better than any of the other recent slew of movies with the same plot, at any rate.
It's an odd plot, too—grown-up bodies inhabited by children's minds. Rather curious that has come up so often lately: Dudley Moore's Like Father Like Son, Judge Reinhold's Vice Versa, and now Tom Hanks in Big. Hanks is the best comic actor (as opposed to comedian) among the three stars. So while Big is not an uproarious hoot from start to finish, it has a little nore human depth than its predecessors.
Big gets help, too, from an appealing performance by co-star Perkins. She and Hanks make an interesting and sympathetic couple. Their relationship makes us look beyond the wild improbability of the basic story and appreciate them as people caught up in a difficult situation.
Hanks makes the most of the opportunities for physical comedy that the role provides. He is very funny as an over-grown pre- teenager.
When the story turns more serious, in the last section, he's still effective and still 100 percent in character. A little more of the humor and energy from the first third of Big would have helped cut the last third's overly sentimental tone. But by that time we're in the mood to be sentimental about these characters, and the way the story's been set up, it can't help but have a bittersweet ending.
July 17, 1988