13 Going on 30 (2004)
Directed by Gary Winick
After total humiliation at her thirteenth birthday party, Jenna Rink wants to just hide until she's thirty. Thanks to some magic wishing dust, Jenna's prayer has been answered. With a knockout body, a fabulous wardrobe, an athlete boyfriend, a dream job, and superstar friends, this can't be a better life. But soon Jenna realizes that adult life isn’t as easy as she hoped for.
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12 films that influenced 13 Going on 30
What critics say influenced 13 Going on 30
Too bad the filmmakers didn't put any more than the most cursory attempt into building any kind of plot around her. Writers Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith (What Women Want) came up with the "story" and another writer, Niels Mueller (Tadpole), "fleshed" it out, but it's really just a half-hearted, half-baked retread of Big (1988), with one twist.
It won't help matters that the concept has been done before and better by "Big".
As their relationship grows, "13 Going on 30" is more of a romance than its obvious model, "Big."
Jennifer Garner is indeed a charmer, but she's the victim of a charmless treatment in "13 Going on 30," another one of those body switch movies (think "Big," " Vice Versa ," "Freaky Friday," etc.) in which a child magically occupies an adult body.
Jennifer Garner breaks character by forgetting that she’s playing an awkward 13-year-old girl in a 30-year-old woman’s body in this girly comedy based on the same plot conceits as “Big” (1988) and the more recent “Freaky Friday.”
I enjoy all movies regardless of genre if they're entertaining, and though this is a "pre-packaged-know-exactly-what-to-expect-next" type of flick that is derivative of several films, (mainly Big) it works.
His first starring role was in 1984's "Splash," director Ron Howard's mermaid-out-of-water tale.
Too bad the filmmakers didn't put any more than the most cursory attempt into building any kind of plot around her. Writers Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith (What Women Want) came up with the "story" and another writer, Niels Mueller (Tadpole), "fleshed" it out, but it's really just a half-hearted, half-baked retread of Big (1988), with one twist.
The director, Gary Winick , came out of Sundance with " Tadpole " (2003), a movie in which a 16-year-old boy was seduced by a 40-year-old woman, and some of us wondered how well that plot would have worked with a 16-year-old girl and a 40-year-old man.
This one, directed by Gary Winick ("Tadpole"), sends us through much more interesting terrain on our way to the happy ending.
If that’s not enough to scare you, then you might just be young and girly enough to delight in director Gary Winick’s (“Tadpole”) middling attempt at teen comedy.
For those of you who may have seen Tadpole, this one was directed by Gary Winick who wrote/directed that smart little film.
Not too much, we find out, as helmer Gary Winick (“Tadpole”) seems to forget that his star is supposed to be a 13-year old teenage girl.
But it plays like "Pulp Fiction" compared to the soft, squishy attitude "13 Going on 30" displays.
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This ain't Dorothy hallucinating about Oz: it's Back to the Future in reverse, or a preemptive It's a Wonderful Life.
Jennifer Garner seems poised to become one of America’s new sweethearts, just as Reese Witherspoon was a few years ago with Sweet Home Alabama.
That's not bad for an actress who until this point hasn't been asked to do much in movies beyond steal "Daredevil" from star Ben Affleck (a snap) and make Leonardo DiCaprio look as if he's old enough, and willing enough, to have sex in "Catch Me If You Can" (ditto).
Too bad the filmmakers didn't put any more than the most cursory attempt into building any kind of plot around her. Writers Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith (What Women Want) came up with the "story" and another writer, Niels Mueller (Tadpole), "fleshed" it out, but it's really just a half-hearted, half-baked retread of Big (1988), with one twist.
The writers, by the way, are Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith , the same duo that wrote the vastly superior office comedy " What Women Want " (2000), in which Mel Gibson was able to read the minds of the women in his office.
Screenwriters Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa ("What Women Want") don't just plunder "Big's" plot line, they even borrow one of its central set pieces: the kick-up-your-heels-and-prove-you're-still-a-kid dance.
Writers Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa ("What Women Want") strike notes of truth as they add tantalizing new twists to the same amusing fantasy that Tom Hanks handled in Penny Marshall's "Big."
Director Gary Winick made the independent film “Tadpole” a couple of years ago, and his sensibility is continually at odds with that of his screenwriters, Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith, who wrote the inane gender-reversal comedy “What Women Want.”
Not since Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa’s last work of tunnel vision, What Women Want, has a film given women so little to choose from: Mel Gibson is the ideal man and the editor-in-chief position at Cosmopolitan is your glass ceiling.
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This ain't Dorothy hallucinating about Oz: it's Back to the Future in reverse, or a preemptive It's a Wonderful Life.
Tom Hanks did this about as well as it can be done in "Big," and I also liked Judge Reinhold in "Vice Versa" and of course Jamie Lee Curtis in the 2003 version of "Freaky Friday."
Garner's performance isn't a full-scale out-of-body burlesque, like Jamie Lee Curtis' in ''Freaky Friday.''
Like Jamie Lee Curtis in the recent Freaky Friday remake, she gets all the mannerisms right, and nothing about the way she acts is over-the-top or too cute.