Big (1988)
Directed by Penny Marshall
When a young boy makes a wish at a carnival machine to be big, he wakes up the following morning to find that it has been granted and his body has grown older overnight, but he is still the same 13-year-old boy inside. Now he must learn how to cope with the unfamiliar world of grown-ups, including getting a job and having his first romantic encounter with a woman.
20 connections found
View:
20 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Big to
That's not a gradual shift but a sudden one, the result of a spin-class accident that takes place not long after a direct reference to the life-altering presto change-o in Big.
They're similarly blunt about from where they borrowed their idea, directly referencing “Big” in the movie.
A pivotal scene before Barrett's inner transformation has the character watching the classic Tom Hank's film Big.
The film even includes a glimpse of Big, in case the Tom Hanks-starring '80s hit didn't instantly spring to mind.
Early on, there’s a brief scene in which Renee guzzles wine and watches Big on TV, a wink to the magic realism of its plot twist – or a tell that this was an unfilmed script from 1988.
Watching “Big” on TV one night, she gets to thinking about wish fulfillment.
Too bad the filmmakers didn't put any more than the most cursory attempt into building any kind of plot around her. Writers Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith (What Women Want) came up with the "story" and another writer, Niels Mueller (Tadpole), "fleshed" it out, but it's really just a half-hearted, half-baked retread of Big (1988), with one twist.
It won't help matters that the concept has been done before and better by "Big".
As their relationship grows, "13 Going on 30" is more of a romance than its obvious model, "Big."
Jennifer Garner is indeed a charmer, but she's the victim of a charmless treatment in "13 Going on 30," another one of those body switch movies (think "Big," " Vice Versa ," "Freaky Friday," etc.) in which a child magically occupies an adult body.
Jennifer Garner breaks character by forgetting that she’s playing an awkward 13-year-old girl in a 30-year-old woman’s body in this girly comedy based on the same plot conceits as “Big” (1988) and the more recent “Freaky Friday.”
I enjoy all movies regardless of genre if they're entertaining, and though this is a "pre-packaged-know-exactly-what-to-expect-next" type of flick that is derivative of several films, (mainly Big) it works.
CONCLUSION: ‘Obsession’ feels like a dark-magic witch’s brew of Together, Fede Álvarez’s 2013 Evil Dead, and Big…
Obsession is the end result of what would have happened had Stephen King and George A Romero collaborated to make Big.
If the idea of watching two grown men act like children - oversize, shouting, stomping, mouth-full-of- Cheez Whiz 12-year-olds - was actually comedy gold, Tom Hanks would be on his fourth "Big" sequel by now and Judge Reinhold would have rode a "Vice Versa" train all the way to retirement.
Picture Tom Hanks in a de-cornified “Big”: Wouldn’t his first move have been a mission for porn and beer?
Credit Ferrell and Reilly for most of them, as they not only commit to the material but really give these adult children a kind of plausibility (one day this will make a good triple feature with "Big," and "13 Going on 30.").
Advertisement
“Shazam!” founders because of an inconsistent attitude that can’t decide whether it wants to be a comedic superhero version of “Big” or a straight action-adventure feature with a no-nonsense villain who appears not to be in the film’s jokey premise.
…arguably looks like Tom Hanks’ Big mashed up with “The Greatest American Hero,” but the real arc is about finding your tribe; family don’t end with blood (shoutout #SPNfamily).
The latest superhero movie may borrow heavily from Big, but ends up telling a sweet story about finding one’s family and themselves.
La cinta es una genial mezcla entre filmes como Big, Gremlins, Deadpool, Goonies y Superman.
…reminded me of Big, Kick-Ass, Hell Boy, Ghostbusters and, yes, a few of the best Spider-Man movies.
This gives Levi the chance to do a Tom Hanks-in-Big kind of shtick, and he’s good at it.
The screenplay was written by Anne Spielberg (Steven's sister) and Gary Ross (who would eventually make his directorial debut with Pleasantville ), and the cinematographer was Barry Sonnenfeld ( Get Shorty , Men in Black ).
With a gentle, affectionate mocking, director Gary Ross (making his directorial debut after writing Big and Dave) lampoons the quaintness of such TV programs by rigorously building a model that adheres to the formula, then slowly pulling it down over the course of two hours.
The movie has been written and directed by Gary Ross , who wrote "Big," the 1988 movie where Tom Hanks was a kid trapped in an adult body.
As he did with Big and Dave, writer and director Gary Ross uses comedy to deal with the value conflicts which continue to divide Americans.
Ross wrote the screenplays for "Big" and "Dave," which were long on warmth and short on complexity and, by that measure…
Pleasantville's mayor, Big Bob (the late J.T. Walsh), still black-and-white and damn proud of it, leads a crackdown on the "coloreds."
Looking back through history, from the original 1973 version of “Freaky Friday” starring Jodie Foster and based on Mary Rogers’ book to Tom Hanks in “Big,” Jennifer Garner in “Going on 30,” and even Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s “Jumanji” series, all of these films are comedies at the heart.
When you think about it, it’s a little bit strange there’s an entire genre of body-switching movies, from the “Freaky Friday” iterations to “18 Again!” to “All of Me” to “The Change-Up” to “Heaven Can Wait” to “Face/Off” to “Dream a Little Dream” and you could even include the likes of “Big” and “13 Going on 30” as a sub-genre in which there’s not technically a body switch per se, but a kid is living inside a grown-up’s body.
In a world with “Freaky Friday” (1976, 2003), “Vice Versa” (1988), “All of Me” (1984) – and please don’t forget “Big” (1988) and “13 Going on 30” (2004) too – a deranged sicko switching bodies with a self-esteem-challenged teenage girl is a textbook case of out-of-the-box thinking.
A limp reverse retread of "Big," "17 Again" not only follows in the wake of that classic 1988 Tom Hanks film, but also pales in comparison to more recent body- and age-switching comedies such as 2003's " Freaky Friday " and 2004's " 13 Going on 30 ."
Screenwriter Jason Filardi ("Bringing Down the House") probably watched "It's A Wonderful Life," "Peggy Sue Got Married," "Back to the Future," "Big," "Heaven Can Wait" and "Freaky Friday" to get ideas for the story.
Back in the late 80's, we had such age traveling films as "Big," in which Tom Hanks is a little boy who gets an adult body and father/son swaps like "Vice Versa," itself a spin on the mother/daughter reversal of 1976's "Freaky Friday," so the time seems ripe to resurrect the genre with "17 Again," a kind of merging of these films with "A Wonderful Life."
The movie might sound a lot like Penny Marshall's "Big" in reverse, but thanks to some great performances from its cast, “17 Again” manages to succeed as its own entity.
While the temptation is there to label the feature as a body switching comedy along the likes of a backwards “Big,” “17 Again” isn’t aiming for a whimsical handle to the laughs.
A reverse Big, as it were.
Advertisement
"Elf," formulaic but lovable, is essentially "Big" in pointy shoes.
Ferrel has an innocence and wonder about his character, and the ability to play a child in a man’s body, that reminds me of Tom Hanks in “Big.”
It's a lot like "Splash," and a lot like "Big," and a lot like some other movies that did not star Tom Hanks.
His Buddy, a cheerful combination of Stan Laurel and Tom Hanks in "Big," is an endearing elf Candide, a true naif who can't help but make the best of everything.
If there's a distinct whiff of Big about all of this, it's worth pointing out that director Jon Favreau (Made) and writer David Berenbaum fully embrace the likeness, even setting some of their picture in a large department store.
Last week I blasted the crowd-pleasing hit movie "13 Going on 30" for being little more than a remake of "Big."
Just as the 1988 comedy "Big" became a smash after several similar projects made it seem perilously late, the unofficial remake called "13 Going on 30" shows signs of becoming a hit in the current teen-pic sweepstakes.
Mean Girls is the second big-studio comedy released in as many weeks to be engineered from 1980s teen-movie DNA: The ancestry of ''Heathers'' is evident in this sweet-tart comedy about female bitchiness in the high school jungle, just as ''Big'' leaves its genetic fingerprints on ''13 Going on 30.''