It's hard being a teenage girl. That seems to be the point of 13 Going On 30, a delightfully distracting knock-off of Big that manages to throw in a few original jokes of its own; after all, Tom Hanks never had to worry about growing breasts or falling in love with an attractive photographer.
Jennifer Garner (of television's Alias) is Jenna Rink, the very definition of a prototypical teenage girl. She's self-conscious, desperately eager to mature and even more frantic to fit in with the Six Chicks, the resident "cool girl's" group at school. After she is tricked and humiliated by the diabolical sextet, Rink plunges into a closet and wishes that she could grow older.
By morning, thanks to the accidental application of wishing dust to Jenna's head overnight, the wish is fulfilled, and the young girl finds herself trapped in the body of her future self, a 30-something yuppie editor at Poise magazine with an oafish hockey player traipsing half-naked around her apartment. When she finds her boyhood friend Matt Flamhaff (now a soon-to-be-married photographer played by the endearing Mark Ruffalo), Jenna discovers that she has become a grown-up version of a Six Chick; ruthless, conniving and self-centered.
Of course, according to the rules of Film Cliches 101, the installation of Jenna's immature, 13-year-old psyche into her 30-year-old body requires that the child within correct the adult's heinous transgressions, setting things right in the life of this woman who has lost sight of the important things in life.
Those important things would be romancing Matt, holding sleep-overs with teenage girls and line-dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (any movie even remotely related to children shouldn't use any music by Michael Jackson. Period.)
Garner and Ruffalo take to their respective roles with earnest aplomb, and their romance is sweet and realistic. Like everyone else, Matt is charmed and pleasantly taken-aback at Jenna's sudden transformation.
What it lacks in originality, 13 Going On 30 makes up for in endearing, pre-teen charm. If only it were this easy to reach 30 in real life.
13 Going On 30 is rated PG-13 for some sexual content and brief drug references.
John Visclosky. John Visclosky is, suffice it to say, "hardly the sharpest intellectual tool in the shed," which is why he has stupidly chosen to here address himself in the third person. He's a mellow sort of guy who enjoys movies and sharing his feelings and innermost … More »
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