I Wish I Was ‘Big’: ‘Shazam!’ Is The Latest Instant-Adulthood Comedy [Be Reel Podcast]

If you find a slightly strange Hollywood premise recurring through film history — as we often do on this genre-hopping podcast — chances are we should look closely at how it plays on our fantasies. After all, what kid doesn’t dream of being, well, big?  From “Big” (1988) to “13 Going on 30” (2004) to the latest DC Comics adaptation “Shazam!,” movies in which children magically hit adulthood overnight are almost inherently aiming for mass appeal as they engage in two separate, sentimental dialogues: Kids, don’t go growing up too fast now; adults, give a little love to the child within. 

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Where this trio of movies begins to succeed (or fail) is in illustrating that a child’s intuition is both perfectly moral but lacking in nuance. And how compatible is that with the allegedly murkier world of adulthood?  Can a junior savant take a plateauing toy company over the top in “Big”? Can designing a glamour magazine like a high-school yearbook in “13 Going On 30” really thwart the impending digital age? Does saving Philadelphia from Mark Strong and his smoke monsters in “Shazam!” make up for a lifetime of abandonment issues?

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Across today’s three films, we assess the intertwined comedy and drama of it all, arguing these rather silly movies depend on the precision of their fish-out-of-water gags from Tom Hanks, Jennifer Garner, and Zachary Levi. They’re movies meant to entertain in their hearts, just as “Big” director Penny Marshall always intended. Winning scripts, of course, ultimately separate the adults from the children.