I actually don’t mind this movie. It has a nice little plot device, and gull darnit if I don’t love me a time travel tale! A quick summary is that a young girl gets made fun of at her thirteenth birthday party. She wishes she was thirty. It happens! Hilarity ensues. It’s Big (1988) but with a girl.
The film has some pretty good elements in it including one of my man crushes Mark Ruffalo. Don’t ask me why – he falls in with Ron Livingston (Berger from Sex and the City) as a mundane nice guy that I would most likely be friends with. Who knows – but, for some odd reason I always find myself wanting these guys to succeed. The film is pretty well written for a Romcom. This includes scenes where Jennifer Garner has to see a man naked (Gross!) and when she interacts with a girl who is thirteen:
Becky: I like your dress.
Jenna: That's because I have these incredible boobs to fill it out!
Garner is fantastic in this role. She plays the character with wide-eyed innocence that few could pull off. I dare say she even got the best of Tom Hanks with his role in Big, as I believe it would be harder to pull off a thirteen year old girl than a thirteen year old boy.
There are only one or two complaints I had. The first one is the fact that “young” Matt (Ruffalo’s character) is played by a somewhat chubby brown haired kid who looks nothing like Ruffalo, while the “young” Jenna Rink (Garner’s character) looks to be every bit the part. Maybe they didn’t know who the leading man was going to be at the time, but couldn’t they have reshot? I also find it frustrating that they gave Ruffalo’s character a fiancé. He basically cheats on his fiancé and then ends up marrying her because – well, I guess, that is what you do when you get older. You marry a person who you don’t really love. Wait. What? Really? I guess, Romcoms gotta have some sort of spur to action. Don’t worry she goes back to when she was thirteen and gets him back from that hussy fiancé of his.
4 out of 10: probably the best score a Romcom can get. Light and fluffy – empty calories.
3 comments:
4 out of 5? I come to the spoiler alert expecting ratings consistency, not this flim flam make it up as you go garbage, even if you are rating films that are 5+ years old on TBS!
Good god, I'm going to have to fire my editor for that one. I have fixed the problem.
Oh and I figure i have to be honest. Every movie I watch must be on here... so... I bring you 13 going on 30!
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