Tag: Big

Mac and Me (1988)

MAC AND ME (1988) *
Cable TV came to the little hamlet of Arcadia, Kansas, circa 1988 or 1989 and I watched a whole lot of movies time and time again.

That includes not only blockbusters like Back to the Future Part II and III, Beetlejuice, Big, Die Hard, Total Recall, and Terminator 2, but Arachnophobia, the first two Bill & Ted movies, The Blob remake, Tremors, Red Heat, Cocktail, The ‘Burbs, Bloodsport, Johnny Be Good, Appointment with Death, and even that disaster starring Tony Danza, She’s Out of Control. That last one begs the question WHY? Because it was on, naturally.

I only watched Mac and Me once back then, however, and that’s because even then with less discriminating taste I knew it sucked.

I revisited it all these decades later and it still righteously sucks. Just imagine a stupid E.T the Extra-Terrestrial where none of the cast members have the slightest bit charm or ability to keep our interest and to earn our emotional investment. It’s also incredibly weird and off-putting, especially considering that it’s designed to be family entertainment like E.T and The Wizard of Oz (1939), still the ultimate standard bearer for this kind of movie.

One of the main sources of weirdness: Mac and Me plugs more products than any movie this side of Leonard Part 6 or Happy Gilmore. Don’t you just hate it when a movie does that?

I mean, though, now that I think about it some more, it’s truly a missed opportunity for the ages that Dorothy didn’t drink Coke or the Tin Man didn’t use WD-40 or the Scarecrow didn’t wear designer hay or the Cowardly Lion didn’t have the courage to make a commercial plug right smack dab in the middle of his big melodramatic scene. MGM could have done so much more with their Yellow Brick Road (a sponsor on each and every brick) and the Wicked Witch of the West should have been melted by a brand name water, for crying out loud. We need a remake immediately just so the ruby slippers can be Nike.

Mac and Me could switch people over forever to Pepsi, Burger King, the St. Louis Cardinals, and Sweet Tarts.

Spielberg also missed an opportunity by not having a dance contest in a chain restaurant in E.T.

I was really bummed when I couldn’t find Paul Rudd in the cast and instead endured these apparently neophyte actors like Jonathan Ward, Tina Caspary, Lauren Stanley, and Jade Calegory. Ward and Caspary have considerably more acting experience than Stanley and Calegory, but they’re just as stilted or melodramatic in every scene.

The adult performers and their characters suck, as well, but they are blessed with fewer scenes to suck than the younger actors. By all rights, I should have rooted for the government agents, but, no, I cheered when the end credits rolled on this jive turkey. This is a movie that viewers should put they survived it on their resume.

Oh, in all this hubbub over a crap movie, I almost forgot MAC stands for ‘Mysterious Alien Creature’ and not that one restaurant with the impromptu dance scene interrupted by evil government agents. We have the main one, then his family, and I am guessing they’re distant, no good cousins of E.T. I mean, I doubt they would ever sit together for one of them big family pictures that brings in all the brothers and sisters and cousins and parents and grandparents and grandchildren. E.T. is simply too good for Mac.

Weird children, weird adults, weird aliens, product placement out the wazoo, and Squire Fridell add up to one weird (and awful) movie.

Mac and Me is so awful that Harry and the Hendersons seems like Citizen Kane instead.

Big (1988)

BIG (1988) Three-and-a-half stars

Twelve-year-old Joshua Baskin (David Moscow) cannot gain admittance on a roller coaster ride because he’s not tall enough, so the embarrassed young man finds a Zoltar Speaks machine and it grants his wish that he were big. Overnight, Joshua Baskin becomes 30 years old and he’s played by Tom Hanks for basically the rest of the movie.

BIG is by far the best of the body switch movies that were all the rave during the Reagan administration. Anybody sentient during that era can surely remember a body switch pic or two. Let’s see, we had OH! HEAVENLY DOG from 1980, whose July 11 release date predates Reagan and which gives us Chevy Chase trapped inside Benji … Chase provides voice-over for Benji in a rather dull murder mystery. Then, there’s LIKE FATHER LIKE SON from 1987 pairing Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron, who just scream father and son, in one of the worst movies of all-time had it not come out during the same year as such cinematic landmarks as THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE, LEONARD PART 6, JAWS THE REVENGE, MANNEQUIN, and TEEN WOLF TOO. Never mind, it’s still one of the worst movies of all-time.

BIG streamlined and more or less perfected the body switch, because we stick with one character (Joshua Baskin) the whole time and there’s less of a suspension of disbelief required for the movie to work. For example, in LIKE FATHER LIKE SON, we have to picture Dudley Moore inside Kirk Cameron and vice-versa (pun and reference to another body switch movie intended), but it’s almost impossible since their speaking voices remain the same. Movies like LIKE FATHER LIKE SON are why the late Roger Ebert coined the phrase “The Idiot Plot.”

Hanks gives a strong performance, especially in conveying the whole child trapped inside a grown man’s body through body language, facial gestures, boyish enthusiasm, wide-eyed reactions. He works his predicament for laughs, for pathos, for drama, and there’s a compelling sequence during his first “big” day when he’s staying at this seedy New York City hotel and he’s scared by the real world. Hanks broke away from his poor man’s Bill Murray for the first time in his career and established his own niche that would culminate in playing Forrest Gump.

Elizabeth Perkins is just terrific in BIG and I don’t think she’s ever been either better or more beautiful than as Susan. Perkins matches Hanks every step of the way during their complicated romance and please go back and watch her during the farewell scene with Baskin. She kisses him on the forehead and strokes behind his ear, in a tender and more motherly fashion. She makes the scene work, as Hanks reverts back to Moscow as Baskin.

Robert Loggia (1930-2015) and John Heard (1946-2017) were two of the best character actors during their respective careers.

Loggia plays against type here as MacMillan, the owner of a toy company who takes a major liking to the way Baskin looks at toys; phooey to marketing reports, Baskin and MacMillan test toys the old-fashioned way by going straight to the biggest toy store. They pair together for a toy piano duet and create one of the most iconic movie scenes of the late 80s. It’s known quite simply as the “Big Piano Scene.”

There was often an edge to Heard during his performances and he taps into that edge a great deal in BIG. Heard creates a real jerk.

Penny Marshall became a name director after BIG and she and Hanks reunited for A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN. Anne Spielberg and Gary Ross wrote the script and Barry Sonnenfeld worked as cinematographer; Ross later directed PLEASANTVILLE and Sonnenfeld’s directorial credits include GET SHORTY and MEN IN BLACK.

There seems to be a certain nostalgia for BIG, just like at times it seems like that’s all true for anything (the good and the bad, and the ugly) from the 80s.

How far can that nostalgia go? Well, there’s the Nostalgic Zoltar Speaks machine for sale on the Zoltar site. One machine comes equipped with a $10,500 price tag and that’s not counting any customization like a wireless microphone to talk through Zoltar ($425 without remote control, $520 with), breathing movement for Zoltar ($625), motion activated attract ($75), custom fortune cards, custom audio messages, and traveling case ($1,500 plastic, $650 wood).

If you do buy that Nostalgic Zoltar Speaks machine for a major chunk of change, do you dare make a wish, “I wish I were big.” I say you better for that level of investment.