Big.

SO BIG

HARD as it is to believe, the American cinema has actually turned out an accomplished, endearing, and by no means mindless fantasy, Big. It was written by Steven Spielberg's kid sister, Anne, in collaboration with Gary Ross, and was directed--when Steven, thank goodness, became unavailable--by Penny Marshall. It may be that the reason this story of a 12-year-old boy miraculously transmuted into a young man circa 35 works so well is that two-thirds of its creative team were women. Though the boys-will-be-boys--or, rather, men-will-be-boys--story has rightly not been subverted, the feminine sensibility must have tempered the rowdiness with delicacy. The film is understatedly funny and measuredly sentimental; what it lacks in sharpness and brilliance, it very nearly makes up for in sensitivity and restraint.

Just think how awful things could have been had Spielberg directed, as he had planned, with Harrison Ford in the lead; the result, at best, would have been an Edsel. Ford's boyish charm, or what there is left of it, and his macho persona would have been of no greater use to him here than his acting ability, or what there ever was of it. Tom Hanks, however, proves just about perfect for the role of man-child rousing himself into a boy-man: brazening it out, lucking out, and sometimes just failing upward into the part of the spurious American adult. This character is not in the least out of the reach of a clever 12-year-old, especially if, in the course of the impersonation, the boy turns 13. Clearly, the Jewish view is at work here, for, at 13, the boy has turned man enough to get the girl, even if that girl is a tough, downright predatory, attractive businesswoman in her late twenties.

Twelve-year-old Josh Baskin, living just across the Hudson in bridge-and-tunnel country, is getting a bit bored with the school and games he shares with his best friend, Billy (earnestly and deliciously enacted by Jared Rushton), and hates being spurned by the girl he pines for merely because another boy is a trifle older and a good deal taller. So, at a fairground, he puts a quarter into an antiquated slot machine (so decrepit it barely looks post-modern) and asks Zoltar, the turbaned robot whose eyes light up and mouth gapes fiercely, to make him "big". He gets a card confirming that "Your Wish Will Come True"; next morning, he wakes up in Tom Hank's body, but with all his adolescent insides intact. His panic-stricken mother takes him for her boy's kidnapper, and all Josh can do is escape to New York City in the on-and-off company of faithful Billy, who alone believes in and wants to help him but cannot always get away from home. Josh registers in one of Times Square's seamier hotels, the St. James, which Billy deems suitable because it is named after a saint. Actually, it's a den of pimps and whores, and when, in one of the film's many delightful moments, Josh turns off a particularly violent movie on television, what goes on around him in the hotel and the street below sounds exactly the same. Such touches in the movie are almost always handled swiftly and uninsistently, and are all the more telling for it.

Josh gets a job as a computer operator in a toy company, an unlikely circumstance made both amusing and just about believable, as is his promotion to head of product development, a job he gets when he and his boss accidentally meet at F. A. O. Schwarz's toy emporium and have a riotous time tapping out duets on a giant luminous piano keyboard laid out on the floor. Josh also makes some rambling comments about what kids want or don't want from toys. This speech may persuade only the boss, but for us there are many other good things: Josh, with Billy's aid, furnishing his loft as a child's dream playground; Josh arousing the jealous hatred of Paul Davenport (John Heard), one of the company's most ruthless operators, over whom he is promoted; Josh winning Paul's girl, the equally aggressive and scheming Susan, away from his fuming rival. Meanwhile he and Billy are still trying to track down Zoltar to get Josh back from a Big Apple operator into a small apple-cheeked boy: or will all that success as an adult businessman and Susan's new--and first true--love lure Josh away forever from his grieving parents, betrayed-feeling best buddy, and childhood itself?

The film, which wisely opts for infectiously droll scenes rather than belly laughs, and which further mixes the humor with dollops of wistfulness, depends crucially on Tom Hanks, who does not let it down. He manages to look and behave like a flawless conflation of child and adult without having to resort to any conventional tricks or cuteness. There is an intrinsic innocence and joy in what he does, and when he is puzzled by others or surprised by his own emotions, it is always done with a spontaneity and purity to make your very toes curl up in a smile. Take the office party where, in a ludicrously Liberacean rented white tux, Josh encounters unknown foods, including baby corn, which he proceeds to eat row by row, as if it were full-grown and he still a voracious child. It is this that draws Susan to him; and his subsequent delight at the gadgets in her rented stretch limo, and her toughness falling away as he overcomes her resistance to enjoying herself on the trampoline in his loft, are scenes that keep on romping inside one's memory.

Especially nice about Big is the way it handles Josh's sexual awakening. When Susan expresses doubts about staying the night on their first impromptu date, Josh, who has bought a child's double-decker bed, says with perfect guilelessness, "You mean sleep over? Okay, but I get to be on top." This sort of thing is treated with stunning unsmuttiness, as is the much later scene of sexual initiation when Susan undoes her blouse and guides Josh's hand to her breast. To embrace her fully, Josh must remove his hand, but it remains cupped for a while, reluctant to relinquish the wonderful shape and sensation it has just discovered.

The theme, clearly, is the triumph of innocence, of what Nietzsche hailed as das Kind im Manne. When the vexed Paul asks Susan, "What's so special about Baskin?" she replies with infinite condescension, but also sincerity, "He's grown up." This paradox could have been of the essence, and, if the movie were not (almost regrettably) aimed at a family audience, it might have been more thoroughly explored. Are steady playfulness, unbridled joie de vivre, undiplomatic outspokenness, virginity at what seems to be age 35 really so grown-up? Of course, the statement can be taken as a mere amiable one-liner, but something--dare I say?--bigger seems to have been intended. Is the child father to the man in ways unsuspected even by Wordsworth and Freud? Is innocence not just enchanting, but also a form of superior wisdom? Or is American society, even in the realms of cutthroat business and sexual competition, so infantile that the most childlike shall lead them all?

In which case, is this a good or a terrible thing? Susan (very finely embodied by Elizabeth Perkins) thrives under Josh's influence, going from chilly promiscuity to faithful loving-kindness, from a severe look appropriate to relentless competitiveness to clothes and hairstyles of much greater femininity--without, however, sacrificing her business acumen. It is Josh who, though he seems to have everything, nevertheless wants to go back to his true childhood, and the choice, even if touchingly written and played, emerges a little less dramatically and humanly satisfying than one might wish. When Susan drives Josh back to the parental house in the suburbs, there are large letters embedded in the asphalt of the street: SCHOOL. SLOW. We must not rush our lives. But what is to become of Susan? Though she half-jokingly (and, therefore, half-seriously) allows as how Josh might catch up with her in ten years, is she not doomed, after such shared innocence, to a life of deprivation?

I don't wish to overpraise Big, but I want to give one more example of its freshness and suggestiveness. When Zoltar first grants Josh's wish, confirmed by that card printed in solemn gothic lettering, the boy discovers that the machine's cord was unplugged all along. When he eventually comes back for his, as it were, return ticket, Josh begins by carefully unplugging Zoltar. The miraculous could not be more gracefully conveyed. This is only the second film directed by the ex-TV actress Penny Marshall, and it is either a fluke or a most auspicious augury. If I knew the right slot, I'd drop in a quarter to make it be the latter.

But, please, whatever you do, do not confuse Big with Big Business, a dreadful film in which, playing two sets of twins, Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin display how doubly unfunny they can be in one long set of errors without much comedy.