Monday Morning Question as answered on Saturday

   I am answering the Monday Morning Question on Saturday morning because I've been sick this week.  Or because the dog ate my homework, take your choice of excuses.  The question is what is your all-time favorite movie.

Big with Tom Hanks.  A thirteen year old boy is transformed by magic into an adult's body and suddenly has to cope with living in an adult world.  Silly concept, yet, just suppose....    Fantasy is the "willing suspension of disbelief".  You imagine what would happen under impossible circumstances. 

   Hanks' character, Josh Baskin,  uses his teen-agers' skill on the computer to get a job with a toy manufacturer.  Because he is actually a kid, he knows his toys, and gets promoted to executive vice-president.  He falls in love and bumbles along adolescently romancing an attractive business woman, who is charmed by his innocence. 

   But as the time comes for the magic to wear off, he has to decide whether to stay an adult, or to go back and live his adolescent life. He examines his choices and studies himself.  He makes a descision that is both happy and sad.

   But, you say, that's not a real problem.  Josh's trouble was based on a problem caused by magic.  Well, then I choose a different favorite:  Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman.  Dustin's Michael Dorsey can't get work.  Is that a real enough problem?  In his desperation he puts on women's clothes and becomes a women to get a female role in a soap opera.

   Whadda you know, he becomes a success, partly because his chauvanism makes him bristle when his female character is "put down" or belittled, or demeaned.  He stands up for women.  He learns about his own character.  In the end he says, "I learned more about being a man as a woman, than I ever did as a man.  You know what I mean?" And his girlfriend says, "No."

   Wait, I'm not done.  Another favorite was True Grit with John Wayne.  Rooster Cogburn is tough as nails as Marshall searching for a killer.  He is softened by his compulsory companion, Maddy, who is a tough as nails young lady.  The interaction between the old codger and the determined young lady changes the nature of the old boy.  But there is plenty of "Yee-Haw" action with shootin' irons, too.