Tom Hanks plays 13-year-old Josh Baskin, a boy who would give anything to be a man. He gets his wish thanks to a creepy, animatronic genie at a carnival, and the rest of the movie follows this awkward man-child trying to negotiate his way through adulthood. The genius of Hanks’ performance is its intuitiveness. Unlike those horrid ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits in which everyone is dressed up like a baby, there are no broad, childlike gestures, just instinctive mannerisms. When Hanks jumps on his dirt bike and furiously pedals away, it’s with the frantic intensity of any child you’ve ever known.
