Big Business (1988) is the Perfect Kind of Film to Grow Up With

Guest post alert! For the third time in just over a calendar year, my dear friend Nellie Beckett asked to write a piece about a film that means an awful lot to her, and I couldn’t say no. (You’ll know why if you read her previous installments about Mary Poppins and Muriel’s Wedding, the latter of which is the most popular newsletter we’ve run so far this year.) If you enjoy her stroll down Memory Lane here, give her newsletter Kulturtante a read, and then follow her reporting for Gulf States Newsroom, and then maybe even go buy something to read from her at Thank You Books in Birmingham. Take it away, Nellie!

The movies that define our childhood are so often the physical media that was just there. The DVDs that grandma kept at her house.* The videotapes played on charter bus circuit TVs that helped pass the time on long field trips. The film strips held onto by sentimental elementary school teachers.**

I was introduced to the brilliance of Lily Tomlin in this way. My family once salvaged a rainy beach vacation with a VHS copy of The Incredible Shrinking Woman. When Tomlin won the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in 2003, I paid homage by making a collage of her photos. One of my proudest used book finds is a signed copy of her longtime partner Jane Wagner’s play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. (Yes, I am a nerd.)

I probably procured my hand-me-down copy of Big Business at one of the myriad used book/tape/thrift stores that dotted my hometown like stars. I don’t recall if it was before or after I started the Tomlin collage, but like her unforgettable turn as Ms. Frizzle in The Magic School Bus, that tape was simply there from the earliest corners of my media consciousness.

In this weird little artifact of the 80s, Tomlin is at her versatile best, and her costar Bette Midler alchemizes her diva tendencies in the best way. In Big Business, career woman culture slams headlong into a sort of Silkwood/Norma Rae hybrid in a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Tomlin and Midler play two sets of identical twins—one from Manhattan, one from West Virginia—each of whom were switched at birth.*** The country mice come to the big city to confront the evil corporate types wanting to acquire their hometown furniture company. Naturally, hijinks ensue, culminating in a recreation of the Harpo Marx mirror sequence from Duck Soup. It’s totally deranged and disarmingly sweet.

Tomlin and Midler are at their absolute best here even when they’re not trading quips. Lily hisses and jangles her bracelets like a rattlesnake in an unforgettable bit of intimidation, while the Divine Miss M conducts a campy country act in a contrived county fair sequence. It’s a sheer delight to see the consummate diva paired with the driest comedienne, both allowed to shine in outrageous outfits. And the sassy script delivers plenty of zingers for both. It feels like it should have been directed by Susan Seidelman.

Big Business is filled with many of the best 80s tropes: a shopping spree at FAO Schwartz, an opulent hotel, crowd shots of dressed-for-success New Yorkers crossing the street, even a pumps-for-sneakers switcheroo.**** Midler even demands to speak to the manager in a proto-Karen girlboss moment. It’s also a narrative rarity even today. Midler was 43 and Tomlin was 49 when Big Business was made. What a delight it is to see women of their ages leading a comedy—one that’s not about being mothers or wives.

It’s a screwball comedy/romp/farce for the Greed Decade. And while Big Business can’t decide if it’s a family film or not, it was a perfect film to grow up with.

It’s incredibly ahead of its time, including a gay subplot played for knowing laughs. And it paves the way for future films like Erin Brockovich and The Devil Wears Prada that would play with similar character tropes. The supporting performances are also far better than they should be. Fred Ward slays as dreamboat redneck Roone Dimmick, Edward Herrmann has a clever bit part, and there’s even a young Seth Green.

I hit play on Big Business again and again because it was tough and funny and opulent, a perfect time capsule of 80s New York that seemed daffy instead of scary.***** The fantasy of a switched life was potent for Millennial girls—Disney did it even better a decade later with their 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, and again post-Y2K with The Princess Diaries and Freaky Friday. The leads committed to the bit with an irresistible verve, even if half of the jokes flew over my head.

Is it a good film? Hard to say. Roger Ebert hated Big Business when it came out. But even after rewatching it through adult eyes, I still found it to be enjoyable. You just have to suspend your disbelief and avoid overthinking it. Besides, who needs conventional film criticism when you’ve got Bette Midler yodeling in a pinafore?

Movies nowadays can feel so depressingly phoned-in that even a Disney dud from the late 80s feels practically Shakespearean. (Which it is.)

*My grandparents had a copy of Fargo as well, which was as traumatizing as it was compelling to watch unsupervised on a summer afternoon. Watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? with them, on the other hand, is a much sweeter Coen Brothers family memory, since they said that movie more or less mirrored their sepia-toned reflections of Depression-era childhood. 

**The Point is a short film fable about being different that my wacky hippie burnout fifth grade gifted teacher played for us. Ringo Starr voices a goofy little elf who is the lone round-headed creature in the kingdom of the pointy heads. Harry Nilsson did the very 70s soundtrack. We watched weird stuff like this when we weren’t making anti-war signs and coloring in illuminated manuscripts.

***Tomlin and Midler both play very different characters within these sets of twins. For each pair, one is aggressive, one is ditzy. It’s a real treat.

****I think there’s a metaphor to that last item…

*****Is it just me, or did New York in the 80s seem absolutely terrifying in most movies?

Big Business is now streaming on Disney+, and it is available to rent elsewhere.