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Tom Hanks classic 'Big' wouldn't be made today, reckons star David Moscow

Tom Hanks and Elizabeth Perkins in ‘Big’ (20th Century Fox)
Tom Hanks and Elizabeth Perkins in ‘Big’ (20th Century Fox)

While Tom Hanks comedy Big is undoubtedly a classic, it has been widely noted that there’s one aspect in particular that is a tad dubious.

It is, of course, the relationship between Hanks’ Josh Baskin and Elizabeth Perkins’ Susan, what with her being a grown woman, and Josh being a 12-year-old child in a man’s body.

The scene in which the pair begin to become ‘intimate’ implies that a sexual encounter takes place too, which leaves all manner of ethical issues to deal with.

So that begs the question whether such a plotline could survive were the movie made in 2018?

David Moscow, who played the young Josh, reckons not.

(Credit: Rex)
(Credit: Rex)

“I think people would jump on it,” Moscow, who is now 43, told Yahoo Movies in the US, on the occasion of the movie’s 30th anniversary.

“If they did make it, the press, before it even came out, would be ripping it to shreds. The religious fanatics would be out there talking about it. People would demonstrating. I don’t think you could.”

“That would go,” Moscow added. “It would be sort of like the other body-switching comedies where it was more about the father and the son flipping.”

That plot did happen, of course, in the movie Vice Versa with Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage, which also came out in 1988.

But it’s not the only issue fans have had with the movie over the years, including the loose ends it leaves untied.

While the film concludes with Josh going back to his original life, walking back home in an oversized business suit, it fails to deal with the agony Josh’s mum must have felt while he was missing, which is only compounded when Hank’s Josh makes that phonecall home.

It also means that adult Josh is now missing too… and that’s without even discussing the Zoltar machine which is still at large and granting wishes – good and bad – with impunity.

Clearly, it’s a much darker movie than we all realised.

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