13 Going On 30 (2004)

13 Going On 30   * *  out of * * * *

Review by film critic Josh Gilchrist (JoshGilch@aol.com)

"13 Going On 30" makes no apologies for being a carbon copy of 1988's "big," although it's inevitable that most audiences will wish that it did. The film is an unabashedly sweet romantic comedy which holds the audience hostage to its endless array of recycled material. The film's cuteness becomes nauseating early on in the film, and it never seems to recover.

Of course, it gets a little worse when the lead in the film is Jennifer Garner. Yes, the woman has that cute girl next door demeanor. She's got the charisma of an excited puppy, running around in circles, begging for someone to play with it. At this point, she's also got second rate acting chops.

There's an upside to this because the character she's playing, Jenna Rink, requires her to unleash that bottles up energy. She's sometimes convincing as a child trapped in an adult's body, but I'm not sure if that is a compliment. What's missing from her performance, and the thing that Tom Hanks did so brilliantly in "big", is the ability to capture the endearing childlike innocence. Instead of playfully dancing on a piano in a toy store, a visually drunk Jenna starts a group dance session to Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Jenna's transformation into a woman takes place after she wishes to be thirty years old when her best friend Matt gives her some magical wishing dust for her birthday. She immediately wakes up in her new body, with a strange naked man in her apartment. She freaks out, of course, and then begins to learn about all of the past years she skipped over.

Every comedy like this needs a romantic subplot, and this film gets it from Jenna trying to track down her childhood friend Matt, now an older, mature and odd acting Mark Ruffalo. The problem with Ruffalo being cast as the romantic lead is that he's not at all appealing in that sort of role. He seems just as out of place here as he did with Gwyneth Paltrow in "View From the Top." He's an actor who is more believable in smaller quirky roles, like his work in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." He seems uncomfortable in this film, knowing that the part is beneath him.

The problem with "13 Going On 30" is that it never becomes more than the few amusing bit parts. There are moments that have the chance to be lovely, like a scene in which Garner is interacting with a group of girls her actual age, but instead it resorts to another inane sequence of dancing to 80's music we'd rather forget. It's as if screenwriters Cathy Yuspa, Josh Goldsmith and Niels Mueller believe that the premise is enough to sell the idea to the masses. If it worked once, it'll work again right. Newsflash: It never works that way.

The jury is still out on Garner's future outside of her television series "Alias." Possibly, if she can find the right material to work with, she could deliver the same charm and sweetness that Meg Ryan did earlier in her career. At this point, Garner resembles the present day Meg Ryan, trying too hard to get us to welcome her into our hearts, like Meg Ryan does today.

==========
X-RAMR-ID: 37626
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1274330
X-RT-TitleID: 1131771
X-RT-AuthorID: 5858
X-RT-RatingText: 2/4