Big (PG, 1988)

Fed up with being little, 12-year-old Josh Baskin makes a wish at a fair's mechanical swami booth and wakes the following morning in a grown man's body. Mortified at what he's done, he flees across the bridge to New York City with his friend Billy to track down the fair and wish himself back to normal. In New York, Josh Tom Hanks stumbles into a computer operator job at MacMillan Toys. His insightfulness gets him promoted overnight and draws the attention of an uptight female executive Elizabeth Perkins. As their relationship develops, Josh begins to mature and settle into his adult skin. It takes Billy, and thoughts of his mother, who thinks her son has been kidnapped, to give Josh the courage to approach the mechanical Zoltar booth again and whisper, "I wish I was small.'"

There aren't very many funny movies about people who get magically transplanted into somebody else's body. The premise is a stale one by now, having shouldered more beatings under Hollywood's bullwhip than the proverbial dead horse. Prelude to a Kiss is one exception. Another is BIG. Both do something intelligent and inventive with that premise, and both are grounded by strong, earnest performances that make the incredible seem credible. Tom Hanks, who would go on a few years later to win back-to-back Oscars for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994), delivers such a performance here. The scene in which he spends a night alone in a seedy New York motel, fidgeting until he breaks into tears, makes his situation gut-wrenchingly believable. He's not merely imitating the mannerisms of an awkward 12-year-old. There's a profound innocence about him -- that innocence makes him both vulnerable and irresistibly charming.

There are other fine performances here as well. David Moscow, playing the young Josh Baskin, is a terrific counterpart for Hanks. Jared Rushton adds a shake of pepper to the role of his friend Billy, and Elizabeth Perkins looks appropriately bewildered by it all as the reluctant love interest. Penny Marshall directs with an uncharacteristically subdued hand, employing no camera tricks or overblown music here. She lets the performers and the sharp script do the speaking, and gives us something larger than comedy. She gives us something to think about.