WhatzUp

13 Going on 30
by Derek Neff

Director Gary Winnick’s 13 Going on 30 is a spun-sugar concoction of a movie, so saccharine and obvious that the granules of sugar will lodge between the teeth and make them ache.

The movie begins in 1987: 13-year old Jenna Rink (Christa B. Allen) is throwing a birthday party for herself, but the only people who come are her sweet, but dorky next-door neighbor Matt (Sean Marquette) and a snotty clique of girls called the Six Chicks, who are there only to play a cruel joke on Jenna. Jenna is so obsessed with being one of the Six Chicks that she spurns the true friendship that Matt offers. “I don’t want to be original,” Jenna whines to him at one point. “I want to be cool.” Jenna is of course too young to realize how mixed up her priorities are, and when she wishes on some magic dust to be “30 and flirty and thriving,” it is no surprise to see that the woman whose body she warps into in the early 21st century (played by Jennifer Garner) is no less superficial. In fact, it soon becomes clear that prior to being replaced by her younger self, the adult-Jenna has become something of a monster.

There is an interesting movie hidden somewhere in this conceit, something along the lines of Mike Nichols’ Regarding Henry, in which a brain-damaged amnesiac is forced to confront the consequences of his own past misdeeds. (The inevitable comparisons to Big are less appropriate, in my opinion.) Functionally, Jenna is an amnesiac: the intervening 17 years have already happened to her, and young Jenna is propelled headlong into the aftermath of those years. But Winnick seems to be frightened of anything that might be mistaken for an actual idea. He’d rather have Jenna cutely lead everyone in a recreation of the zombie dance sequence from Michael Jackson’s video “Thriller.” (The “Thriller” scene is, I’ll readily admit, adorable and fun, but the music is all wrong for the given time-frame. “Thriller” came out in 1982, and although technically this isn’t an anachronism, it’s still probably not what middle schoolers were listening to in ‘87. Same goes with Rick Springfield. And Pat Benatar. I’m pretty sure new pop music was being made in 1987 - not good music, maybe, but music nonetheless.)

Jenna seeks refuge in her old friend Matt (Mark Ruffalo), who in 2004 is now a struggling photographer living in Greenwich Village. The once-pudgy Matt has now become a bona fide cool guy. We know this because he is wearing a CBGB OMFUG t-shirt. The movie is nothing but easy pre-packaged surfaces like this. We never have to wonder for one moment what we are supposed to be thinking about any of the characters or events herein. Winnick uses music and dialogue the way they use cattle prods in slaughterhouses, to move us docilely from one pen to the next. We are teased with the suggestion of a few promising ideas, but they never materialize. From first frame to last, 13 Going on 30 doesn’t want to be original; it just wants to be cool. It’s neither.