Recent Watching: Big

Last night, my wife and I watched Big on our television from a DVD I checked out from the public library. I had previously seen the picture with my high school friend, Mark, back when it came to the big screen in Livonia, Michigan in 1988.

If you are unfamiliar with the plot of Big, it goes something like the following:

• Josh, a 13 year old boy in Northern New Jersey visits a carnival where he finds a fortune telling machine called Zoltar. The machine asks Josh to make a wish and he says he wants to be big.
• The next morning, Josh wakes up to find that he is a thirty year old man, played by Tom Hanks.
• Josh moves to NYC, finds a job at a toy company, falls in love, but, eventually, realizes he misses his mother and his life as a junior high student. He finds the Zoltar machine and is transmogrified back into his old self.

Overall, the picture is charming and was probably the biggest factor in moving Hanks from a medium well known comic actor and minor TV star — did you see Bosom Buddies — to the superstar he became.

I had a few thoughts after I finished the picture:

1. Elizabeth Perkins was one of the hottest young actresses in Hollywood at this point after having been in About Last Night and From the Hip before this. In just about every scene, she has a lit cigarette. More recently she had a memorable run in the TV show Weeds as Celia Hodes. Did anyone besides me see her as Constance in the Starz show Minx?
2. The best scene in big is the piano dance sequence at the now defunct FAO Schwartz flagship toy store on Fifth Avenue with Robert Loggia and Tom Hanks. The sequence is entertaining, but I do miss the way they used to film Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in pictures like Swing Time in one take with the whole body visible.
3. Is there anyone other than my father who fondly remembers Robert Loggia starring in the 1966 NBC television show T.H.E. Cat?

QOTD:

• Do you have a favorite Tom Hanks picture?
• If you were to pick just three favorite pictures from the 1980s, what would they be?