Thirteen-year-old Jenna Rink has had it with adolescence. Despite having a loyal but nerdy best friend named Matt, Jenna is desperate to befriend “The Six Chicks,” a group of popular girls at school. She invites them to her birthday party, but instead of being accepted, she suffers a Seven Minutes in Heaven humiliation and fervently wishes she were a grown-up. Thanks to some magic dust that she got from Matt, her wish is granted, and a 30-year-old Jenna (Jennifer Garner) wakes up in New York City.

After the shock of what has happened begins to wear off, she discovers she’s a successful editor of the kind of beauty magazines she read as a teenager. Her best friend and colleague is Lucy Wyman (Judy Greer), one of The Six Chicks. But her success didn’t come easy, as Jenna soon finds out. She and Matt (Mark Ruffalo) are no longer friends and haven’t been for quite some time. It also becomes clear to Jenna that her adult self is conniving and self-serving, obsessed with having it all and indifferent to those she hurts in the process of achieving her dreams.

13 Going on 30 is a romance, but also about Jenna’s redemption. She realizes she’s gotten everything she wanted in life, but is increasingly appalled at what her future self did to get there. Jennifer Garner is excellent as a thirteen-year-old in a thirty-year-old body. Jenna’s naiveté and childlike wonder could have so easily been cringy and annoying in the hands of a less capable actor. Still, Garner comes across as sweet while maintaining a sense of confidence and determination that is hard to find in many insecure thirteen-year-olds.

Mark Ruffalo plays Matt with a laid-back coolness perfectly balanced with lingering vulnerability at being ditched by his best friend and crush at thirteen. His resistance to Jenna re-entering his life in such a confusing way is understandable, but also incredibly endearing because you can see how easily he’s charmed by her. The two have some pretty fantastic chemistry, and I’m willing to forgive the fact that Matt has a fiancée, given that we see her two or three times. She’s essentially the catalyst for Jenna realizing she can’t turn back time to right her wrongs. She has to start from the beginning to make things right.

I dislike nothing about this film except Jenna’s hockey-player boyfriend. He was a doofus; I just didn’t understand what a power-hungry diva boss like Jenna would ever see in him, other than his “celebrity” status. The horrible striptease to Ice Ice Baby was humorous, if only for Jenna’s horrified reaction.

Yes, there are a dozen-and-one questions about how the magic dust worked, the plot’s plausibility, and blah, blah, blah, but I don’t care. I wanted to be entertained, laugh, and watch a sweet romance blossom, and I got all those things from 13 Going on 30. I also got a fantastic dance sequence to Thriller, which will always make a Top 10 (maybe Top 20) list of the best rom-com moments.

13 Going on 30 touches upon what we can and can’t achieve without a moral compass. Obviously, it’s better to be a good person than a back-stabbing bitch, even if the latter makes the path to success much more straightforward. Jenna was able to see who she turned out to be and, with a second chance, become who she really wanted instead. 13 Going on 30 doesn’t break any new ground in terms of the genre, but it’s a sweet, funny movie with a captivating performance by Garner and a swoon-worthy leading man in Ruffalo.

And I won’t lie, I believe the scene between Jenna and Matt on the swings in the park is one of the most romantic scenes in rom-com history.

Watched: 07/31/2019
Notable Song: Crazy For You by Madonna