Sock me in the stomach three more times
In retrospect some elements of Big come off creepier than they were intended, or would have been perceived at the time. In the early ’80s when children vanished, people weren’t so much worried about molestation as they were about bodily harm. The assumption was that the motive for kidnapping was financial gain, rather than a personal drive. What other use is a kid, really, than ransoming him off?
Naive, maybe. But look at the way that products were advertised even back then. Would you buy something based on those ad campaigns? The 1980s may not seem that long ago, but our assumptions and attitudes about the world have changed so much. Racial, sexual, cultural understanding and acceptance are becoming more the norm. Taboo subjects have become everyday discussion. Even things like basic psychology have developed and spread so far.
This movie is grounded in the same mid-’80s American middle-class mindset as much children’s entertainment of the era, written by baby boomers more inclined to reflect on their own rosy memories of childhood than to observe the world and the real logistics around them. The kids don’t speak and interact like kids; they behave the way that adults remembered themselves in the 1950s. Hell, the whole theme of the movie is some baby boomer yearning for his own youth. Except sort of inverted.
I think I can appreciate this movie a little better as an adult, even given its weird cultural obliviousness. As a kid I remember it annoying me to no end. Everything was wrong. Why was everyone so excited about insect Transformers? Insecticons had been around for years at that point. The bulk of the oh-so-droll jokes about social security numbers and workplace politics bored me or went over my head. The only appeal the movie had for me was the setpieces like the FAO Schwartz piano duet, Tom Hanks’ apartment hijinks, and all the Zoltar business. It was all flash and curiosity. Was that really what it was like to move into your own apartment? Was that really what it was like to get a job? Wow, it would be great to be left alone to wander around in FAO Schwartz, or that carnival.
Now I can stand back and understand the movie’s ambition. I still marvel at its blinkered vision, but from within a cultural context that I can appreciate. As a case study, it gets a person thinking.