"13 Going on 30"

Early on, "13 Going on 30" raises hopes that its message will be "It's great to be different." So why does it dash those hopes so cruelly?

By Stephanie Zacharek

April 23, 2004 |

In Gary Winick's "13 Going on 30" the lovely, coltishly awkward 13-year-old Jenna Rink gazes from afar at the snotty, popular girls in her class and whines, "I don't wanna be original; I wanna be cool."

The line resonates, because at 13, the age when kids long, paradoxically, both to fit in and to set themselves apart, it's so hard to see that to be original is to be cool. And particularly because it shows up so early in a picture that's clearly a polished, mainstream product, that line is an exciting promise: We all expect indie movies to be challenging (whether they are or not is another story). But a Hollywood movie that flirts with unconventional ideas -- in other words, one that recognizes that to be original is to be cool -- is even more enticing.

When Jenna's friend and fellow misfit Matt shows up for her birthday party and starts dancing, spasmodically, blissfully, and very, very embarrassingly, to Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House," it seems like a promise that "13 Going on 30" will be the movie that every former and current square peg hopes to see: One that doesn't say just, "It's OK to be different," but "It's great to be different."

As 13-year-olds used to say, but probably don't anymore: Fat chance. And that's a major disappointment, considering that at least three-quarters of "13 Going on 30" shows both a witty intelligence and lightness of touch that's all too rare in mainstream comedies these days. Winick (director of the coming-of-age indie "Tadpole"), working with a script by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa ("What Women Want"), makes even the movie's most conventional comic scenes feel fresh. I was so charmed by the opening scenes of "13 Going on 30," and so entertained by the middle portion of it, that I had high hopes for its ending -- hopes that were cruelly dashed. Like a petulant 13-year-old, I'm still pouting over my disappointment.

"13 Going on 30" opens in 1987. Young Jenna (she's played by Christa B. Allen, with an intensely believable sense of openness and vulnerability) wants nothing more than to be accepted by the cool girls at school, even if that means rejecting her best friend, Matt Flamhaff, a genuine outsider and clearly a smart, interesting kid (played astutely by Jack Salvatore Jr., a perfect counterpart to Allen). The movie drops heavy clues that he's the kid who's into all the great music early on; Jenna's tastes lean more toward heartthrob Rick Springfield, but you get the idea he could turn her around by playing "Oliver's Army" just once.

The cool girls play a cruel trick on Jenna, but it's one that hurts Matt even more, and Winick handles this section so beautifully that the characters' pain seems to hang in the air like a heavy mist. (I could feel the audience around me tense up collectively.) Matt has given Jenna an incredibly personal, handmade birthday present, which she seems only vaguely interested in; he has also given her some wishing dust, and in her deeply unhappy state, she uses it to wish herself into adulthood.

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