I got on my soapbox last week about Reel 13 Classics airing films from the 80's, so I'll spare you that this time and focus on the film itself. If BIG is considered to be a successful film and a "classic", it is so because of one reason – the charm and performance of Tom Hanks. Nothing else about the film is very resonant or appealing, but Hanks is good enough to almost hypnotize an audience to ignore or forget about its flaws.
The film doesn't really get started until Hanks appears as a child who wakes up one morning as an adult (but with the mind of a child). You get the sense that director Penny Marshall knew this as well. She wastes no time getting the film to the change (the first act is only ten minutes long). There is very little exposition about the main character of Josh and his need to be "big" is flimsy, at best (my guess is that much of this was discarded in the editing room). Once Hanks is at the center of things, the film chooses to focus on him being funny and getting in funny, cute situations (What if an adult kid gets a job? What if an adult kid meets a girl?). All this ignores the fact that his parents think he's been kidnapped (more needed to be done with this) and the idea that a carnival machine can transform a kid overnight into an adult. Pushing these factors to the side in favor of Hanks shtick as the film does is the equivalent of tap dancing to get people not to look at the burning building behind them.
All that I've written so far suggests that I heartily dislike BIG, which actually isn't the case. It IS kind of charming and THAT is entirely due to Hanks. The plot is contrived and the other actors are hardly as successful (the usually reliable John Heard is overly smarmy here, Robert Loggia's character is underdeveloped and love interest Elizabeth Perkins is wholly unappealing) and yet, Hanks makes it work. I can't say enough about his thoroughly detailed performance (he did receive an Oscar nomination for his efforts, but lost to Dustin Hoffman in RAIN MAN). Every choice he makes is spot-on and the way he uses his body language to further the illusion that he is a child inside the body of an adult man is wonderfully amazing. It's a master class in screen acting that should be studied by young thespians for years to come. If only the script were better…