“I wish I were big.”
synopsis
Twelve-year-old Josh Baskin makes a frustrated wish at a carnival fortune-telling machine to be “big” — and wakes up the next morning in the body of a 30-year-old man. With no explanation and no way to reverse the spell, he runs to New York City, lands a job at a toy company, and begins navigating adult life armed only with middle-school instincts. As he stumbles through boardrooms, romance, and corporate politics, Josh’s honesty and wide-eyed enthusiasm begin to disrupt a world of calculated performance and guarded ambition.
pairs well with ...
mini-review
The magic trick is simple; the performance is not. Tom Hanks doesn’t mug or exaggerate — he grounds Josh’s wonder and panic in small, behavioral details. The comedy comes from sincerity colliding with adult expectations. But beneath the laughs is something quietly sad: adulthood is shown as compromise, performance, and loss of imaginative courage. The film asks whether growing up is inevitable — and whether it’s worth it. It’s funny, yes, but also gently melancholic, which is why it still lands decades later.
Pizza. Childhood stories. A moment when adulthood feels like a performance review.
Absurdist's Corner
A major corporation trusts its product innovation to someone who still believes chocolate milk is a balanced dinner.
How does Josh and his "girlfriend" know the exact moment when he will transform back into a boy?
Why didn't the invented social security number throw a red flag?
fun facts
The famous FAO Schwarz floor-piano scene became so iconic it practically turned into a universal shorthand for “childlike joy in an adult body.”
Tom Hanks doesn’t play “a man acting like a kid.” He plays a kid who is terrified and delighted by adulthood — which is why it’s funny and oddly moving.
The movie is sneakily one of the better “corporate world” comedies, because Josh’s honesty functions like a truth serum in a room full of adults performing adulthood.