"13 Going on 30" - Doesn't Quite Add Up
by Homer Yen
(c) 2004
All of us welcome a cheery new face to the world
of cinema. And a radiant disposition such as
Jennifer Garner's will never go unappreciated.
She oozes such breeziness that even the dourest
of people would find themselves cracking a grin
just because of the happy aura that emanates from
her. It is the kind of embracing warmth that
define cinematic sweethearts like Meg Ryan and
Reese Witherspoon. And now we can add Jennifer
Garner to that list.
Now, she just needs to find the right kind of
material to bring out the charm that she
potentially can bring to a romantic comedy. It's
evident that she has what it takes. In all of
her scenes, her mere presence seems to provide a
little bit more of a buzz. For example, even her
actions to save a dying party by initiating a
line dance to Michael Jackson's
always-playable-but-seldom-heard Thriller is
probably funnier than it should be.
What the film lacks, however, is cohesiveness.
The premise of the film borrows heavily from
"Big," the body-switch film against which all
others body-switch film are compared. We first
meet our heroine, Jenna (Jennifer Garner), who is
13 and feeling awkward. Shunned by the coolest
students and only appreciated by the equally
awkward classmate Matt, she wishes that those
clumsy adolescent years were behind her and that
her life resembled that of Jennifer Garner.
Quicker than you can say "thirty and flirty," she
wakes up a new woman. But the film seems to
quickly abandon its premise of a 13-year old in a
30-old body. As the new Jenna acclimates herself
into the world of adulthood, the film is not so
much about a kid wearing adult shoes. It's about
Jenna's power struggle at a large magazine where
she is an editor and also her attempts to renew
her friendship with Matt (Mark Ruffalo), who is
now less awkward and even a handsome city-boy.
17 years of her life have inexplicably whisked
by, and now, as the older Jenna, she is trying to
reconstruct her history.
The now-older Jenna realizes that she was
something of a bee-otch, which allowed her to
achieve the status that she enjoys now. The
challenge is that, going forward, no 13-year old
person can do the things that this high-powered
woman is required to do to keep the magazine
afloat. Meanwhile, it's somewhat discomforting
to see a 13-year old make herself so available to
the now-30ish Mark. The cohesiveness seems
disjointed. The film would've made more sense if
they eliminated the entire 13-going-on-30 idea
and just focused on Jenna realizing her Ebenezer
Scrooge ways and reforming before its too late.
As a comedy, it does provide its moments of
levity. But the types of laughs arise out of
embarrassing acts as well as cute ones. Watching
Jenna's hockey player boyfriend launch into an
impromptu striptease is the embarrassing kind of
funny. 30 year-old Jenna, who thinks like a
13-year old, trying to pick up a young man by
using the pick-up line, "can I borrow your
ketchup?" is the cute sort of funny. While "13
Going on 30" doesn't feel completely recycled, it
doesn't feel like it's broken new ground either.
Jennifer Garner is winning, but as for the rest
of the film, you get just about what you expect.
Grade: C+
S: 1 out of 3
L: 0 out of 3
V: 0 out of 3
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X-RAMR-ID: 37666
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1276082
X-RT-TitleID: 1131771
X-RT-AuthorID: 1370
X-RT-RatingText: C+
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