13 Going On 30

Busy Hands: Garner gets ahold of herself

13 Going On 30 opts for fantasy over formula.

13 Going On 30

by Cindy Fuchs

13 Going On 30 Directed by Gary Winick A Sony Pictures release Opens Friday at area theaters

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13 Going On 30 is best when it’s adorable -- that is, when Jennifer Garner acts like she’s 13. After her 13-year-old consciousness skips into her 30-year-old body, Garner’s Jenna is stunned to discover that she has bouncy new breasts and an apartment full of designer furniture and expensive outfits. Her eyes go wide, her arms go gangly, and her mouth twists into all sorts of shapes, indicating glee, shock and repulsion all at the same time.

This first awakening occurs just after the young Jenna has made a fairy-dusted wish to be grown up and popular. ("30 and Flirty" is the title of the magazine article that inspires her.) The occasion is her 13th birthday, which dissolves into disaster when the cool girls she so desperately wants to please leave her in a closet. This just after her best friend and next-door neighbor Matt (Jack Salvatore Jr.) has witnessed her energetic preparations for her party, including her rehearsing the steps to the video for "Thriller."

This image -- Jenna emulating Michael Jackson in 1987 -- is revisited a few scenes later, after she has begun to assimilate into her 30-year-old life. As her initial excitement at being a grown-up wears off, Jenna feels pressured by her high-power career and romance with a self-absorbed galoot of a New York Ranger (Samuel Ball). (Garner’s elaborate gasping and cringing when he begins to disrobe recall Lucille Ball’s charismatic comedy.) Attending another party, this time promoting her magazine, Poise, Jenna is instructed by her boss (Andy Serkis, without digital effects) to liven up the proceedings. Jenna knows just the thing: She approaches the DJ (the only black man in the room) and asks him to play "Thriller." Within minutes, she has the self-conscious stiffs dancing those famously silly monster steps.

This moment is extra-adorable, a triumph of hygienic, manic crossover -- nostalgic, delightful and evacuated of any weirdness, sexuality or Michaelness. Garner’s wide smile and galoomphy dance steps are enchanting, the group dance giddy and hopeful. It’s also the occasion for Jenna’s reunion with Matt (now played with awkward warmth by Mark Ruffalo). He’s now a scruffy, independent-minded photographer (who will, of course, help her redeem the magazine’s stodgy slickness), exemplifying the moral course from which Jenna has strayed as she has so aggressively pursued cool-girlness. While it’s been described as a sort of distaff Big, Gary Winick’s follow-up to Tadpole shifts the terms of Penny Marshall’s film. Jenna’s primary relationship, the unfulfilled romance with Matt, is predictably saved, unlike Tom Hanks’ impossible adult relationship with Elizabeth Perkins. And Jenna’s challenges to the magazine business as usual are inspired by her childlike enthusiasm for a time that, literally speaking, didn’t occur for her (i.e., college).

The concept is surely seductive, that she might reconcile with her wonderfully patient mother (Kathy Baker) and paste together nonexistent memories to remake herself in a present that in itself doesn’t exist (the 13-year-old’s dream of being 30). True, the formula part (Jenna must learn lessons, at the hands of best friend Judy Greer) is tedious. But the fantasy part (at a slumber party with her 13-year-old girl neighbors, adult Jenna shares her delirious first kiss with Matt) is relentlessly charming, even thrilling.