Tom Hanks received his first Academy Award nomination for his fine performance in this goofy comedy (he made up for not winning by being awarded consecutive best actor Oscars - for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump - in the 1990s). He plays a 12-year-old boy transplanted by a carnival wishing contraption into a man's body, and his portrayal of a simple but sincere guy in a cynical world foreshadows his role as Gump. Elizabeth Perkins also makes an impact as a co-worker who finds herself strangely attracted to Hanks's little big man. Big may well be a formula fantasy movie, but Penny Marshall's polished direction combined with Hanks's gauche charm make it the best of the spate of body-swap movies turned out by Hollywood in the late 1980s.

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.