13 Going On 30 film review

certificate_12A

13 GOING ON 30

It's one of life's cruel ironies that youngsters desire to be grown ups and grown ups yearn to be youngsters. At a time when some women will employ every means possible to look younger, Jenna Rink's wish to be older is perhaps difficult to understand. When the teenager's wish comes true, more abruptly than she anticipated, she finds adult life is no easier. 13 Going On 30 is a sweet and touching female version of Big in which the 13-year-old Jenna wakes up to find herself 30. In the same way that Tom Hanks made Big endearing, it's Jennifer Garner's natural goofiness and likeability in the role of the grown up Jenna that make 13 Going On 30 so appealing.

With a blend of Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock, Garner captures perfectly Jenna's doe-eyed sense of wonder and innocence, exemplified by the moment she discovers she has breasts. To be at turns sexy and silly is something sure to stand the Alias star in good stead as she transitions from TV to movies.

When we first meet the gawky young Jenna Rink (Christa B. Allen), it's her thirteenth birthday. In her efforts to ingratiate herself to the Six Chicks gang, led by the spiteful Lucy, she humiliates her best friend, the dorky Matt Flamhaff who has a crush on her. Her ploy fails and so, rejected by the Six Chicks and dreading her adolescence, in desperation she cries out, "I want to be thirty, flirty and thriving." When she wakes up, she's got what she wants. A successful editor at Poise magazine, she's dating an ice hockey star and has the model looks she craved. What she doesn't have is any recollection of the intervening years.

In her efforts to piece her life together, she tracks down Matt (Mark Ruffalo), now a photographer and on the verge of getting married. What she discovers is that to achieve her dreams, along the way she'd ruthlessly abandoned her family and close friends, including Matt. Setting out to make up for her past behavior, she realizes that ambition had blinded her to her true feelings. The pairing of Garner and the winsome Ruffalo is playfully charming and the perfect antidote to the film's more contrived and unconvincing plot line involving the shenanigans at Poise.