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13
Going on 30
During a recent nubilose evening out here in nullibiety and in
keeping with our recent theme of attending films likely to be
popular with the pre-nubile set, we found ourselves purchasing a
ticket for 13 going on 30 which stars Jennifer Garner
(link does not contain nudity as she hasn't done any yet) and Mark
Ruffalo, a Goliard favorite. We can't really explain why we've
been drawn towards these sort of films lately other than to say with
the state of the world being the way it is our interest in seeing
gratuitous violence, mayhem, hostage taking, terrorism or, indeed,
any sort of testosterone laden action is at an all time low and films at the
opposite end of the spectrum have suddenly seemed appealing. Not
that we ever had anything against coming of age comedies involving
attractive young ladies but if the reason one heads to the theater in
the first place is to forget about life for awhile then why, during
these times when life's ugliest scenes literally spill out of the
television, would we sign up to see gun play, aggression and
bloodshed during our down time. In any event, there we were sticking out like a sore
thumb in a line of gum
smacking middle schoolers muttering "one suspicious looking
character for yet another teen comedy please" to a
ticket taker that looked sort of like she was 13 going on 30 herself.
The theme of the film is one that has been done to death in the past
of course, most memorably in such films as Big,
Peggy Sue got Married, and
Back to the Future. In this particular mutation, young
Jenna is at her thirteenth birthday party being humiliated by the
junior high plastics who have only agreed to come in the first place
because Jenna agreed to do their homework. When they trick her into
playing a silly blindfolding game and then promptly head out the front door
after raiding the snack table and leave Jenna behind in a closet waiting
in vain for one of the popular boys
to come in, she begins realizing she has been embarrassed. As she
sits alone in the closet she begins wishing that she was all grown up and living the "thirty, flirty,
and almost thriving" life she had been reading about in one of
the fashion magazines. Due to some magic dust that her only real
friend Matt had given her for her birthday (along with a meticulously designed doll
house that he made himself), her wish comes true and she wakes up in
a swank Manhattan apartment with a naked professional hockey player
sharing her bed. She soon also finds out that she is a top editor at
the very fashion magazine she used to read and best friends with
Lucy the former ringleader of the plastics from junior high and the
girl mainly responsible for locking her in the closet. Panicked and still 13 mentally, she
scrambles to find Matt who informs her when she does that they
aren't friends anymore and haven't been since that very day of her
thirteenth birthday party when, frustrated and embarrassed, she broke the dollhouse
by throwing it at him and told him
she never wanted to talk to him again. Jenna, overwhelmed by it all
and still trying to get used to her adult self, shrugs off the
separation from Matt at first and instead revels in having money, and breasts,
and 100's of pairs of shoes and being able to do and eat whatever
she wants. She slowly realizes however that she has become the kind
of person who doesn't call her parents, fires people after stealing their
ideas, and has sex with co-worker's husbands in her office. She
again seeks out Matt to find out what happened to her and is
reluctantly told that she got everything she wanted by basically becoming a
cold, manipulative biotch. She then sets about rectifying the damage
she has done mostly by bringing her new thirteen year old perspective
to her new adult world.
Ruffalo plays the adult Matt with his usual hemming and hawing style
and he and Garner doing the perky, bubblicious teen in a woman's
body bit have a good chemistry and bring fine performances and
thereby instill life in a feel good film with mostly uninteresting
co stars and a predictable plot. It is cute, we guess you would say,
and has some good messages mixed in and much nostalgia for anyone
who is of the age to remember being a teenager in the 80's when MTV
influenced everything anyone under the age of twenty did. Garner is
especially good and feels like a real person even when she is
playing rather unreal roles. Don't expect major revelations here but
if you've got a couple hours to waste and don't feel like spending
it watching the kind of crap that's on the news already, you could
easily do worse than this film.
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