Big Review

The movie "Big" was a wildly popular film when it first came out in 1988.

The fundamentals of this movie hold up rather well over time; Tom Hanks is actually really believable as being a kid in a man's body. I watch all movies for free on 123 movies. Funnily enough, I've actually known many boys in men's bodies - I even married one, so I consider myself an expert and as such can say with certainty than Mr. Hanks did a fabulous job. (The only problem with his portrayal is that in my experience, these types of guys aren't fond of holding down jobs or being respectful to/appreciative of women; otherwise, this was spot-on acting.)

The reactions of the other characters to Josh (Hanks' character) are also really well-done and pretty believable. I think Elizabeth Perkins did a fine job as the woman dealing with the child-like man, and I commend her performance.

That being said, a lot of this movie is laughably out-of-date - completely unavoidable, naturally, but hilarious.

A huge part of what makes it outdated, of course, is the computers used in the film. In the opening scene, Josh is playing some game on his computer which I clearly remember thinking looking "really cool" back when I first saw this. In fact, I think the wizard game he's playing in that first scene was cutting-edge at the time. Few people even owned computers back in 1988; I always had them because my dad used to work for a computer company, but the coolest games we had at that point undoubtedly were Pong and some text-based game where you have to try to escape from the Titanic (holy crap I loved that game!). My son scoffed at the wizard game and actually asked me if that was really how computers used to be. I assured him that yes, it was.

He looked at me then with something resembling pity, surely imagining my horribly deprived childhood where I couldn't simply google any question that came to mind, and where sitting at a computer meant gazing into a black-and-green DOS nightmare.

Yes, the computers really date this film. But what dates it even more, to me, is how easily this dude waltzes in and lands a job. It's really hilarious; he and his friend start looking through want ads, and most of the scene they are going through the C category and finally shrug and say, "Yeah, try this computer job!" He goes in, makes up a social security number, charms the boss, and has a job.

If that doesn't prove this movie wasn't made in the past two or three years, then I don't know what does.

PS - The dad from the original 90210 makes a cameo in "Big", as does Jon Lovitz.