Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving

Hi there, neighbor, going my way…

Who doesn’t remember when Jennifer Garner was best-known for starring on Alias? That’s one of the reasons 2004’s 13 Going On 30 made such a splash with the public–we got to see Jennifer smile and enjoy herself. Well, that and 13 is a cute, fun movie on the line of Big. It’s hard to believe the movie is twenty years old this year. We seemed so innocent back then.

It all opens on Jenna Rink’s (Christa B. Allen) thirteenth birthday, and like many teenaged girls, she’s wishing she was someone else. She wants to be thirty. Since she’s not thirty yet, she wants to be popular and preferably a member of the Six Chicks, the school’s premier clique that’s currently led by Lucy, better known as “Tom-Tom” (Alexandra Kyle). These girls are so intimidating they even coordinate their wardrobes.

Incidentally, as we all know, the original Mean Girls came out the same year, so movies featuring groups of girls sashaying around school dressed alike and looking down their noses was apparently a thing. Anyway, moving on…

Jenna’s best friend is Matt (Sean Marquette), the boy next door. They’ve grown up together, have their own inside jokes, and do everything together. Matt, though, is secretly in love with Jenna while Jenna takes Matt for granted, but he’s hoping she’ll catch up. For her birthday this year he’s decorated a dollhouse for her with all her favorite stuff, and the finishing touch is some wishing powder because he wants all of Jenna’s dreams to come true.

At Jenna’s party, the Six Chicks show up, only to ditch Jenna during Seven Minutes In Heaven, and when Matt goes to find Jenna she pushes him away and shuts herself up in the basement closet, where she wishes to be “thirty, flirty, and thriving.” Some of Matt’s wishing powder falls on her, of course.

Jenna (Jennifer Garner) wakes up as, well, not herself. She’s not only thirty, but she lives in a tony seventh-floor apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and there’s a guy in her shower who keeps calling her “Sweet Bottom.”

Naturally, Jenna is freaked out and rushes out of the apartment, straight into the disdainful face of Lucy Wyman (Judy Greer), the adult formerly known as Tom-Tom who’s now Jenna’s fellow editor at Poise Magazine, a Glamour-like periodical that keeps losing out to rival magazine Sparkle, which somehow not only keeps copying Poise’s story ideas, but doing them one better. If Poise sports ten J-Lo secrets, Sparkle will reveal eleven. Editor-in-chief Richard (Andy Serkis) is disgusted and mystified, wondering where the leak is.

That all can wait, though, because Jenna’s desperate to find something, anything familiar, or for that matter, anyone, and the first thing she does is find Matt (Mark Ruffalo), who’s now a photographer living in the Village. He’s pretty stunned to see her, but he takes it more in stride than she does. She’s shocked to learn that her thirty-year old self is not only pretty bratty and self-serving, but she’s basically cut her parents out of her life.

Jenna now has to find her footing as a thirty-year old, but nothing is going to be the same. The guy who called her “Sweet Bottom” turns out to be her boyfriend, hockey player Alex Carlson (Samuel Ball), and after some awkward dates Jenna dumps him and doesn’t look back. She and Matt reconnect over Razzles, but there is the looming spectre of his wedding to Wendy (Lynn Collins), a weatherlady who wants him to move to Chicago with her. Jenna may or may not get a do-over, but she’s going to make the best of what she does have, and there may just be more surprises in store.

This rom-com is a straight-ahead fun. I remember how cool it was at the time to see another side of Jennifer Garner, and the publicity certainly seemed to play that up. Granted, yes, it’s a wee bit predictable in some ways, but it’s so charming that it doesn’t matter. Jennifer Garner is cute. It’s also a boon that the movie doesn’t waste time on exposition. What made Matt’s wishing powder magical? Who knows. All we’re supposed to focus on is the movie’s overlying philosophy, “Be careful what you wish for.”

What’s also nice is the movie blends both of Jenna’s worlds. The fabric of her blindfold during Seven Minutes in Heaven shows up as the fabric in her sleeping mask and in the dress she wears to the Poise party where she gets everyone dancing to Thriller. Jenna wears a lot of the same makeup colors that she would have worn at thirteen, only with 2004 twists like setting powder and Stila Lip Glaze. And naturally Jenna with her thirteen year old brain quotes Pat Benatar to the thirteen year old girls at the slumber party she has later.

Speaking of which, that’s the one thing 13 Going On 30 probably couldn’t get away with now. The idea of Jenna as a thirty-year old having thirteen year olds over for a slumber party, while completely natural for her character, would be sort of awkward nowadays even though it’s completely big sisterly and non-threatening. How time passes.

Oh, and there’s the matter of Alex doing a striptease to “Ice Ice, Baby” in one scene, but that’s just awkward for everyone. Anything involving Vanilla Ice is going to be awkward. At least Samuel Ball went for it and had fun, but Vanilla Ice? Shudder.

Other than that, the movie is dated but in a good way. It’s quintessentially 2004, from the fashion to the music to the glossy, slightly idealized look, plus 13 Going On 30 is one of two 2004 movies to prominently feature Liz Phair’s “Why Can’t I?” (the other was Win A Date With Tad Hamilton).

13 Going On 30 was a game changer as well, for something that’s not often talked about: Those of us who are west of the Rockies got to eat Razzles for the first time. I’m pretty sure they were just on the East Coast and in the Midwest up until then, but the movie probably helped up the demand for them, plus its release coincided with Hershey acquiring the Razzle brand. So thank you, Movie.

Even though I hadn’t seen 13 Going On 30 in a long time, it was fun going back to it because it’s not only about innocence, but it’s from a time when we were also relatively innocent, and that’s something to be missed.

For more of the Neighbors Blogathon, please see my post right here and Quiggy’s right here. Thanks for reading, all, and look for another post on Monday…

---

13 Going On 30 is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.

~Purchases made via Amazon Affiliate links found on this site help support Taking Up Room at no extra cost to you.~

If you’re enjoying what you see on Taking Up Room, please subscribe to my Substack page, where you’ll find both free and paid subscriber-only reviews of mostly new and newish movies, documentaries, and shows. I publish every Wednesday and Saturday.