There’s a magical moment in the movie Big, and it’s the one you know I’m going to write about, the one you’ve seen hundreds of times, the one they’ll play ad nauseam when Tom Hanks buys the Hollywood Forever Cemetary Farm, because you can’t talk about FAO Schwarz without bringing it up.
Hanks and Robert Loggia stumble across an enormous floor piano, and we watch them dazzle us with a rendition of “Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks,” staples for any kid who suffered through piano lessons. By the end, Loggia claps him on the back and enthralled by the 12-year-old-in-a-30-year-old’s-body, and his sense of childhood wonder, Hanks becomes a vice president at Loggia’s toy company.
There’s a lot more to the movie, but for our purposes, that will do. It’s a moment of pure movie magic, one that you can’t help smile at and be utterly transfixed by as they leap across the piano without missing a note.


















