13 Going on
30
Back in 1987 and 1988 there was a strange invasion of the “body-switcher”
movies. In slightly over a year there were four movies in which children’s
minds were suddenly transported into adult bodies (and the other way
around.) Most of them had children switching places with their parents or
Grandparents. There was
Vice Versa
with Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage,
Like Father, Like Son with
Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron and
18 Again
with George Burns and Charlie Schlatter. The last of those films, the best
of them, and frankly the only one anyone still remembers, was Tom Hanks in
Big.
That was
because the film didn't get bogged down in the gimmick. It only looked at
one side of the equation, a little boy in a man’s body. The reason that
film has been so beloved over the years while the others have faded away is
not just because Big was better written and filmed. (Though it
was.) However, Big has become a classic because of the wonder and
great joy of discovery that Tom Hanks brought to his part.
Well, as the title of this new film points out, the people who were thirteen
when those films came out are thirty now. There is a whole new audience for
the body-switcher movie. The return of the genre started off with last year's remake of
the Disney classic Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay
Lohan. Now, we get a female variation
on Big starring Jennifer
Garner of TV’s Alias in her first starring role.
This film starts in
1987. (I think it’s just a coincidence that the film takes place in the
year of the movie trend, but who knows?) Jenna is a 13-year-old who wants
to be part of her junior high’s Heathers-esque in girl clique.
Despite being warned by Matt, her chubby loser best friend, that they are
evil and mean, Jenna wants nothing more than to fit in their group. The
leader of their group (who has the unlikely nickname Tom Tom) tells Jenna
that she will come to her thirteenth birthday party and bring the cute guy
she has a crush on, if Jenna will write a paper for her. When the girls end
up playing a cruel trick on her, Jenna sits alone in her closet and wishes
that she could be an adult. When some “wishing dust” that her guy friend
gave her trickles down on her, her wish is granted. Yes, I know that the
whole idea of “wishing dust” is kind of a cheap cop out, but in these movies
you just have to decide early on if you like the story enough to just go
with it… and in this case I did.
Unlike Big,
though, Jenna does not just appear as a child in an adult’s body. Not
even just Jennifer Garner’s adult body. In this film, Jenna just
fast-forwards into her life at thirty. She has lived all the time and has a
history of changes and mistakes. Jenna does not
remember the last seventeen years of her life. However, since that birthday party, she became the
leader of the clique, then got her dream job as the hard-bitten editor of
Poise, her old
favorite teen magazine. Tom Tom, now going by her real name of Lucy, is her
co-worker. It's now all up to Jenna to connect the dots to figure out how she
went from being a sweet, innocent girl to being a cold, manipulating bitch.
Jenna is also thrown into the 9-to-5 world, being leaned upon by her
flamboyantly gay boss (Andy Serkis, a.k.a. Gollum from The Lord of the
Rings movies) to save the magazine from an upstart rival that seems to
have a spy in the fold and is scooping their every idea. The magazine
politics stuff is the weak link in the film. Particularly little girl
Jenna’s big idea to save the fashion mag from extinction seems
kind of silly.
However, it isn’t a fatal flaw.
Much more
entertaining is Jenna’s attempt to function in the adult world. Her
reactions to things like seeing guys naked and having boobs and drinking
alcohol and her home and life in the big city are all priceless. She brings
her 1987 mentality to modern Manhattan and uses her childhood favorites to
bring a dorky chic and feeling of goodwill to the haute couture
events she is at. For example, she saves a dying party by insisting that
the DJ stop playing that gloomy techno and instead play Michael Jackson’s
“Thriller.” She stands alone in the middle of the dance floor and totally
un-self-consciously relives the monster dance moves from the video to that
song. At first the crowd watches with bemused detachment, but Jenna is so
out there in the moment, so completely unafraid to be uncool, that the
fashionistas can’t help but join in. (I guess it should be pointed out that
most of the music Jenna listens to in the soundtrack was mostly already
three or four years old by 1987. In fact, of all the retro songs used in
the film, only Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” would have
been current when Jenna went through her metamorphosis.)
Completely confused
by how she came to be the controlling harridan that she seems to have grown
into, she goes to find her old best friend and confidant Matt, who has grown
up into a cute free-lance photographer (Mark Ruffalo). It turns out that
her thirteenth birthday party was the last time they spoke. Soon after she
became part of the in-crowd and broke his heart by never acknowledging him
again. Little girl Jenna can’t understand how she let that happen, and as
they spend more and more time together she realizes that she had taken the
wrong path in life. He was her destiny. Complicating things just a bit is
the fact that he is about to get married.
Jennifer Garner is a
revelation as Jenna. I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of her series
Alias. The grim determination of her character in that show… and
other roles like Daredevil’s humorless Elektra and Jennifer
Love-Hewitt’s neurotic roommate in the short-lived TV series Time of Your
Life… all made it hard to picture her in a light romantic
comedy. Her rare previous supporting comic work in films like Dude
Where’s My Car? and Mr. Magoo also did not raise hope that she
could pull this off. Well, Garner is simply amazing in the way she throws
herself into the role. She allows herself a gentle sense of wonder and
wears a constant goofy smile that an actress trying to be “cool” may not
dare try. This role is a coming-out party for Garner, an announcement to
the skeptics (like me) that she will become a huge star. She has made me a
believer.
Ruffalo is also
surprisingly good. The only thing I can remember seeing him in previously
was playing the slimy detective in Meg Ryan’s In the Cut, but here he
does a deft balancing act. His character of Matt
is obviously grudgingly falling again for Jenna, and yet you can see him
keeping her at arms length because he does remember what it was like to be
that 13-year-old fat kid who was destroyed by the woman once before.
13 Going On 30
is far from a perfect movie. What it is, though, is damned likable. I am
willing to overlook the little faults on the strength of a charming premise
that is wittily worked out and a star-making performance.
(4/04)
Jay
S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2004.
PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: April 24, 2004.
