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One hopes that 13 Going On 30 doesn’t inspire the same kind of onslaught we saw in the great body-switching armada of 1987-88 (Like Father, Like Son, Vice Versa, 18 Again and Big). Then again, it was only nine months ago that the remake of Freaky Friday was delivered so maybe it’s way too late. The good news is that we could complete the “come-in-threes” plotline with Michael Jackson getting into the body of a 13-year old and it would be a marked improvement over this.

Young Jenna Rink doesn’t pronounce a desire to switch places with someone for a day nor does she wish to be big. (Both are interesting scenarios for porn plots, though.) She just wants to be a member of the in-crowd, formatted here as the “six chicks”, your typical Heathers-like clique. Jenna is apparently so unpopular that the only people she bothers to invite to her birthday party are the aforementioned sextet and her best friend, Matt, the chubby kid whose interests include photography, Razzles and Jenna.

After a round of "Seven Minutes In Heaven" goes awry…oh wait…not familiar with that game? Innocently it’s that blindfolded closet kissing game. As described by the “six chicks” leader, you place someone in the dark and the boy gets “to do whatever they want to you.” A character later humorously refers to the game as “spin the rapist,” which is not only the most disturbing of encapsulations but also the film’s best joke.

Anyway, the six chicks ditch Jenna in the closet to go get beer, things go wrong (thankfully not in the date rape variety) and soon she is sprayed with wishing dust, pulling a Rip Van Winkle and wakes up 17 years later in the body of Jennifer Garner. Many Alias fans I’m sure have had that same wish. My apologies for recirculating jokes, but if a film you have to pay $9 for can do it, two jokes for free (even of the same concept) is a better average than you’ll receive with this.

The film’s trailer was basically nothing more than a string of “icky gross boys” jokes. Rather odd considering Jenna was ready to take a come-what-may approach with the school hottie in the closet, but this is the essential ingenuity of the script’s premise. It’s all they had. Recycle the hand-raising joke from Big here and talk about her amazing boobs there and we’re stuck in the same screenplay dead zone that befell us the last time we watched a Cathy Yuspa/Josh Goldsmith credit called What Women Want.

Secretary: “We need a decision about Eminem.”
Jenna: “Plain….um…peanut.”

Yeah, it’s that kind of bad. Go through the lost-love-of-your-youth motions all you want with the older Matt (Mark Ruffalo) but don’t forget your oh-so-humorous premise. Where the accentuated harshness of the film, Thirteen, was co-written by a thirteen year-old, here is a film that I believe was actually created by people who never were thirteen and have no idea what a grown-up is either. Director Gary Winick who also directed Sundance’s overrated sensation, Tadpole, clearly slept through or forgot some crucial years himself since he hasn’t a clue about adolescence or burgeoning adulthood. You've got no script, so you might as well take an Austin Powers approach to Jenna’s lost time in this world. Wouldn’t it be great to see her reaction to her youthful music choices of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston becoming the biggest freak in the world and a coked-out battered wife by 2004?

And speaking of music choices, I’d like whoever was responsible for the soundtrack of this movie to stand front-and-center cause you should never be allowed to touch or hear music ever again. For one, when designing the tracklist to set your film’s emotions to, it’s usually a good idea not to overplay like your typical Top 40 station. In other words, don’t use three songs in the film twice. The Go-Go’s “Head Over Heels” is heard twice in the first half-hour. Rick Springfield’s "Jessie’s Girl" gets doubled up and used not nearly as creatively as in Boogie Nights. And Liz Phair’s “Why Can’t I?” (last heard in Mandy Moore’s How To Deal) is quickly showing up wherever Michelle Branch’s "Breathe" can’t.

How about Jenna and a room full of 13-year old slumber partiers singing to the “hookers-rally-against-the-pimps” music video of Pat Benatar’s “Love Is A Battlefield”? What mother allows her child a 30-year woman over for a sleepover? And “Ice Ice Baby”? SERIOUSLY? Just because the character who dances to it is a hockey player doesn’t make it right. Exactly how many problems does that make with the film’s music choices?

OK, and what’s with the "Thriller"? Popular and required collecting in 1983, but by 1987 Michael Jackson got around to that "Bad" follow-up. Consequently you are braindead if you believe that a party room full of young magazine hotshots in 2004 would not only be happy to hear Thriller but manage to remember the exact dance moves of the zombies from the music video? Garner, instead, seems to be channeling the Bill Cosby dance right down to his facial expressions in what is the film’s aforementioned “comic centerpiece.”

Oh, but the film is taking us for zombies anyway at every turn. It’s the kind of insulting that has us believe a magazine editor would scoop stories to a rival mag and then leave the pile of thank-you letters sitting in her desk. Which means the other editor was stupid enough to SEND thank yous for corporate espionage to her office or she was moronic enough to bring them in from home. God knows, a thirteen-year-old would have more sense. But that age is too sophisticated for dreck like this.

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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=9268&reviewer=198
originally posted: 04/23/04 14:52:28
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