Release Date: April 23, 2004
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Judy Greer, Christa B. Allen, Andy Serkis, Jack Salvatore Jr.
Directed by: Gary Winick
Written by: Cathy Yuspa, Josh Goldsmith, Niels Mueller
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Entertainment
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (some sexual content, brief drug references)
13 Going on 30 is another one of those movies where a child ends up in an adult’s body, the situation is exploited for comedy, and a life lesson is dropped into the mix at the end. Like Big, Vice Versa, and the recent Freaky Friday, this is a movie that plays with an interesting idea and does a few things right, but ultimately there’s little to remember it by. Jennifer Garner borders on adorable, but unfortunately the writers give up their body-switching gimmick almost right away and focus all of their efforts on a generic plot about negotiating the potholes and hurdles of real life.
Christa B. Allen plays the 13-year-old version of Jenna Rink (the character mostly played by Garner), and she’s a typical teenager, trying desperately to fit in with the cool kids at school. She has a birthday party that the most popular students agree to come to, but it turns out that they’re only coming to play a prank on her. When they leave her locked in a closet, she becomes desperately depressed and starts begging to turn 30 years old. Conveniently, a pouch of magic wishing dust, a present from her caring best friend Matt (Jack Salvatore Jr.), sends her on her way; the next day, she wakes up 17 years later in a new body and a new apartment in New York City.
But she’s still Jenna Rink, as the mail on her coffee table proves. Dressed in only a slip and an overcoat, she clumsily finds her way to her new job, where she’s a prestigious magazine editor. Strangely enough, no one seems to notice her unusual attire or the fact that she’s operating from a 13-year-old worldview, not a 30-year-old one. She bumbles her way through the day, rarely getting a real laugh from the audience, and eventually tries to link up with her old friend Matt (now played by Mark Ruffalo). He’s become the unattainable love interest and has learned to forget her after she apparently ignored him for the past 17 years.
Aside from being entirely formulaic (everyone will know where the story is heading as soon as she knocks on Matt’s door), 13 Going on 30 has other problems with its writing. Instead of playing on Jenna’s awkward placement in this new environment, writers Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith (What Women Want) are more content to give us a Christmas Carol-type story, where the leading lady is a hard-driving businesswoman who tends to ignore the little people who truly care for her. Except there isn’t much charm to that part of the story, as lovely as it sounds, because there isn’t enough of Jennifer Garner acting like a 13-year-old in the grown-up world.
In this movie Garner is essentially just a giddy woman falling into relatively unfunny situations. Unlike the delightful Big, 13 Going on 30 doesn’t make the most out of its unusual premise or its enthusiastic star. In Big, Tom Hanks fit flawlessly into his part as an 11-year-old and found himself in scenarios that were constantly amusing, and the movie let him run with it. From dancing on a floor piano with his boss, losing his virginity to a coworker, and shooting silly string out of his nose, he played a truly appealing character that never got lost in a formulaic plot.
Garner’s “inner” 13-year-old is believable thanks to actress’s seemingly inexhaustible zeal, but unlike Big, her character crumples when things like her job, her romantic life, and her renewed friendship with Mark Ruffalo’s character weigh down the movie’s sense of fun. Having Garner stumble her way through things while slowly learning about life would have made for a much more enjoyable film. Instead, she’s constantly falling into coincidence and not really learning anything until her character has no choice but to catch up with the boring story.
The things that work in 13 Going on 30 are only due to Garner herself, including her relationship with Mark Ruffalo. That romance would have been as boring as drying paint if not for her constant excitement in the role. In one scene, she starts dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” at a staff party and she has to literally drag Ruffalo’s character out on the floor with her. The scene itself isn’t all that cute, it lasts a bit too long, and it’s a perfect example of how dry the subplots are. Ruffalo almost never seems to want to do anything she says, and he acts like a lazy teenager who was just asked to take out the garbage, not someone still deeply in love with his childhood crush.
If we wanted to look at other plot flaws, we could -- such as the barely developed magic trick that caused the whole story to happen in the first place -- but things like that in movies like this are supposed to be overlooked. Logic, after all, is not top priority in a film where a character inhabits a latter-day version of herself with no regard to linear continuity.
It isn’t clear, based on 13 Going on 30, whether Jennifer Garner will become a Julia Roberts-caliber star -- as this movie so clearly positions her to be. If this fun character of hers wasn’t so poorly used here, it would have been a sure bet, but at the moment, it’s safer to say that she won’t count 13 Going on 30 as her breakthrough role -- and neither should you.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)