Review of 13 Going On 30

Introduction

Hollywood has been quick to recognise the goldmine potential of the girly-teen movie market. Recent analysis shows that the 12 - 15 year old female has an attractive disposable income, and Teen movies like `Mean Girls`, `Confessions of a Drama Queen` and `The Princess Diaries` have done magnificently at the box-office, as well as generating huge sales on DVD. And I should know. I`ve purchased all the above in recent months thanks to the persistent pester power of my own daughters who fit perfectly into this target audience.

Of course, they`d already seen `13` at the cinema and when this arrived I was assured that it was `brilliant`, `well wicked` and `minty`, whatever that might mean. So there you have it. The opinions that count.

For those of you with time on your hands, and the patience to listen to a male forty-something`s point of view then feel free to read on.

This movie offers a fun new take on the age/body swap routine used in the brilliant `Big`, and more recently in the successful re-working of `Freaky Friday`.
In `13 Going on 30` a 13 year old girl, Jenna Rink, who`s having a bad time (being teased and bullied, looking a little geeky etc) wishes that she could be `thirty, flirty and thriving`. Next thing you know she wakes up (still with the mind of a 13 year old) to discover that her body is that of a thirty year old (actually Jennifer Garner, `Alias`). She`s also moved forward in time and is now a successful magazine journalist with live-in boyfriend and a glamorous life in NYC. And she`s got a lot of learning to do!

Some of that learning shows that the girl that she`s become may be successful, beautiful and glamorous, but all at the cost of her moral fibre and frankly, her happiness. Jenna tracks down Matt Flamhaff (Mark Ruffalo), her old next-door neighbour who clearly had a crush on her 17 years ago. Together they get her life back on track and win over the hearts of many who had given up hope of the ruthless thirty-year-old Jenna ever being `nice` again. This may be a typically uplifting Hollywood outing, but it`s also fiercely moralistic.

Garner does a sterling job in the key role, and looks great. Andy Serkis (best known as Gollum in Lord of the Rings) is reasonably cast as her camp editor and Judy Greer plays Jenna`s bitchy school friend turned colleague.

Video

This is, as you`d expect for such a recent movie, a first-class transfer and is offered up on a single dual-layer disc. It`s a film full of colour (she works for a fashion magazine after all) and the lighting and composition is pleasing if unspectacular. It`s an anamorphic transfer in 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

Audio

A nice Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack which features some nostalgic tracks from the eighties, a fact lost on most the audience who wouldn`t have been alive at the time, though nice for anyone 30-plus. There are very few peripheral effects so not one to give the speaker-system a full-body workout.

Features

This is a surprisingly (and probably over-specified) feature-rich disc. Given the target audience the two commentaries here are surely superfluous. The bloopers and deleted scenes might provide some additional distraction, as will the vaguely entertaining featurettes.

Director`s Commentary and Producer`s Commentary

First up is Director Gary Winnick`s yak-track. Boy, you`ve got to have either a lot of spare time or zealous dedication to sit through all these commentaries. In truth, this isn`t too bad. He`s a likable guy who has much to say about a film that he seems genuinely enthused by. The second commentary features producers Susan Arnold and Donna Arkoff Roth and could have been the result of politics gone mad. It`s less informative, less fun and entirely superfluous (in my humble opinion).

Bloopers and Deleted Scenes

Maybe these will amuse a 13 year old but seeing Garner get the giggles again and again, as well as some fairly standard line-fluffs is just plain dull. Stuff like this used to hit the cutting room floor and stay there. There are also 18 deleted scenes - cut from the movie because they didn`t cut the mustard. So what are they doing here, lined up like disconnected lame ducks? I hate extras like these.

Featurettes

There are three featurettes here: `The Making of a Teen Dream` and `Making of a Teen Dream: Another take` are standard sycophantic cast and crew interviews.

`I Was a Teen Geek` is more of the same but this time shows the same cast and crew divulging the geekiest things from their past. It also includes some amazingly grotesque yearbook photos to substantiate their claims. There are one or two `ugly ducklings` in there which is no bad thing for the sensitive early teen to see. It`s a bit of fun too.

To top off the rich-feature set are two music videos and a theatrical trailer.

Conclusion

`13 going on 30` offers up refreshing new angle on the body/age swap theme previously explored by movies like `Big` or `Freaky Friday`. Every teenage girl probably wishes, at least once, that she could fast-forward to being fully grown-up. In `13 going on 30` she does exactly that.

Jennifer Garner (`Alias`) looks great in the lead, and turns in a fine performance. The support is generally stereotypical and predictably cast, and the movie moves along in a pleasantly entertaining, if slightly predictable way. But it`s a lot of fun and my two daughters (one of whom is 13 going on 30 herself) thoroughly enjoyed it.

It`s a disc generously packed with extras which, in the main are pointlessly superfluous, but present nonetheless.

Not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but a perfectly good one.

My one and only gripe is the choice of magazine editing as a focus for the narrative which is not something that is easily understood by the target audience, though this didn`t seem to affect my own daughters enjoyment of a movie that should be filed next to your copies of `The Princess Diaries` and `Freaky Friday`.