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Penny Marshall · 1988 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A twelve-year-old humiliated in front of a girl at a carnival wishes at a fortune-telling machine that he were big, and wakes next morning in a thirty-year-old body with the same mind inside it. Hiding in a bare Manhattan flat, he takes a job at a toy company, where his opinions on what children want carry him upstairs. Marshall's fable was the first by a woman director to take a hundred million dollars.

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Attributes

Genre
FantasyComedyComing-of-Age
Theme
Coming of AgeIdentity & SelfTransformationLove
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
InnocentEverymanWise Fool
Plot structure
Rags to RichesExile and Return
Symbol / motif
The Fair / CarnivalThe MachineThe City
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
ComicRomantic
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues