Something to watch tonight: Thursday 4 July

Big (Marshall, 1988)

Watching TV and movies in this house is – as you might expect – like a mil­it­ary exercise.

Combinations of spread­sheets, Google docs, vari­ous shared cal­en­dars, apps like JustWatch and Letterboxd – they all con­trib­ute to the well-oiled machine that is Funerals & Snakes.

But last Friday night presen­ted us with a challenge.

I was host­ing a couple of young guests, wait­ing for my wife to fly home from Australia. The ini­tial view­ing request was for “some­thing not depress­ing”. That was easy. I have a 4K UHD disc of the least depress­ing film in his­tory, Paddington 2.

Job done, I think, but then the text arrives about the delayed flight from Sydney. Lawks, I might have to busk some­thing! How to keep these young folk* enter­tained and amused for an extra couple of hours?

This is where a sub­scrip­tion to Disney+ pays for itself. That back cata­logue is so extens­ive, and such high qual­ity, that there should always be some­thing to keep all gen­er­a­tions amused. A quick scroll through the “Movies” tab – bypass the brands – and you can­not fail.

I came across Penny Marshall’s Big – in the Disney col­lec­tion because they now own the Fox cata­logue – and asked wheth­er my com­pan­ions had ever seen it. The answer was in the neg­at­ive – why would they? – so we fired up one of the most sat­is­fy­ing com­ed­ies of the 80s.

It’s a body swap movie, which was a pop­u­lar genre then and still is. David Moscow plays Josh Baskin, an ordin­ary New Jersey 13-year-old, wait­ing for the growth spurt that will allow him to take the big rides at the fair. Frustrated, he uses his last quarter to make a wish with a mys­ter­i­ous mech­an­ic­al for­tune tell­er called Zoltar.

Zoltar grants Josh’s wish to be “big” and the next morn­ing he wakes up as Tom Hanks – baby Tom Hanks, though. Fresh-faced and on the verge of super star­dom and two Oscars.

While try­ing to find Zoltar (not try­ing all that hard, to be hon­est) and reverse the spell, Josh hides out in Manhattan and becomes a toy industry guru and cat­nip for fel­low exec­ut­ive Elizabeth Perkins, who has grown tired of the yup­pie, ambi­tious, dog-eat-dog guys that inhab­it the cor­por­ate world.

Aware of – often rev­el­ling in – its own weird­ness, but always trust­ing in the effer­ves­cence of its star, Big remains a win­ner to this day.

Incidentally, the script for Big was ori­gin­ally attached to Robert De Niro and would have had a very dif­fer­ent vibe indeed – a weirdly Taxi Driver-esque exper­i­ence of Manhattan’s dark side through the eyes of a child. Intrigued as I am by that idea, I am so glad that Hanks’ charm and chops are what we remem­ber from Big.

*“Young folk” is rel­at­ive, obvi­ously. Anyone under 30 is ‘young folk’ to me.

Where to watch Big

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and UK: Streaming on Disney+

USA: Streaming on Disney+ or Hulu