Watched: 01/02/2025
Format: Disney+
Viewing: First
Director: Gary Winick
So, yeah, this movie was never aimed at me. I'm fine with that. It wasn't aimed at me in 2004 when I was 29, and in 2026, it's even less for me.
It's also not very good. And not good in ways that I don't really understand. YMMV with Jennifer Garner as a lead, but mostly the movie is a mess while also managing to feel... boring.
It's another in a long line of movies about someone who is young getting to be an adult - like Big, Vice-Versa or... Shazam, I guess. Oddly, Jenna (as a teen played by Christa B. Allen and by Garner as a 13-year-old) really wants to be... thirty?
Rather than pulling a "Big" and aging the character up overnight in place, Jenna skips 17 years of memory and conscious time to wake up as a sexually active and career-oriented 30 year old woman. The deeply complicated implications here are, of course, never explored even though our child-mind in Garner's body sees and is offered dick within minutes of this transformation, and other scenes hint that Jenna is not a one-man sort of gal. This isn't just me - it's the fundamental mismatch of the implications of the movie versus what it wants to actually do.
Jenna finds out she's an editor at her favorite magazine from when she was 13, "Poise" - which put the idea in her head that thirty was the age to be. In 1987. Another thing I absolutely do not buy.
Like... what? 30 is kind of skipping over, honestly, the ages of 18-29. I can see "I hope I stay cool *after* my cool expiration date", but I don't really even get where this movie is going - except everyone working on the movie was in their 50's and thinking "ah, to be 30 again! Remember 30?"
At 13 Jenna had a best friend who is the boy next door (sigh), who is a @#$%ing dork. Her attempt to mix the Six Chicks (their name for the Plastic/ Mean Girls/ Heathers) with Matt is laudable but doomed. Launched into the future, Jenna seeks out Matt who is now a hip Mark Ruffalo living in The Village and therefore appealing.
Matt *should* realize Jenna has suffered some sort of head trauma as she seems confused and can't recall anything after 1987, but instead he takes her to her apartment and leaves her alone.
She's also still hanging out and co-working with Lucy - now Judy Greer (I will never understand how Greer never became a lead) - who was sort of the Regina George of her middle school group, the Six Chicks. Fun fact: Brie Larson is a Six Chick but has zero lines! We've got the Hulk AND Captain Marvel in this thing.
Anyway, the movie is basically Jenna trying to save her magazine which is losing readers to a rival, realizing Matt is a good (and hot) dude who will get away, Lucy is terrible, etc...
On a side note - Jenna is not utterly *amazed* by the ubiquity of cell phones and personal computers, and as a 13 year old in 1987, likely wouldn't even know how to type.
There's an underlying very dark movie here that never gets fully explored or acknowledged - that Jenna grew up into a horrible fucking person. We see the first moments of that transformation as she's traumatized by the bad 13th birthday party (a boilerplate popularity thing that blows up in her face), but miss the ensuing descent into becoming a monster who drops friends, her parents, fucks over her own company, fires others to cover her tracks, etc... She's banging co-workers' husbands. It's all kind of there but, oddly, the movie never really acknowledges that Jenna is *aware* she became a monster. She just knows she doesn't get the boy she wants to kiss.
It's kind of odd. Like, it seems like not just hinting at this stuff and a full realization she became someone she didn't want to be is there, or was there and was edited out. But all we really get is "but I'm wearing low-rise jeans and you rejected me! Boo-hoo!" And, yeah, someone stole her work which means she'll need to find a new gig, but that's not her dealing with the fact she became the person who sunk Poise.
SPOILER: I'll also argue that the pitch Jenna uses that will save Poise, that Lucy steals, is confusing at best for a fashion and lifestyle magazine for adults. I know narratively why they did it, but it doesn't make any sense when you see it.
Critics in 2004 raved about charming Jennifer Garner is/ was, and... maybe after two Elektra movies and spending 10 million hours of my life subjected to Capital One card commercial, I'm a bit immune to those charms. I dunno. She's fine? I feel like she's playing a 9 year old more than a 13 year old, and not once does she seem to have a moment of self-doubt or sit back and *observe*. It's the same perky pluck you see applied in movies where we're supposed to be charmed by cluelessness. But those are *dumb* characters, not just kids.
The movie is not the cutesy thing I was expecting, and while it hints at the darker stuff, it never bothers to explore it - just drop hints that maybe the 12 year olds watching the movie don't fully understand. It lands somewhere in between, like two scripts with the same basic premise were merged. We get the goofy Thriller dance sequence but we also get a fade to black instead of Jenna dealing with her boyfriend trying to have sex - which we know she didn't engage in. Like, a whole scene that's crucial just does not happen.
Anyhow, for a movie that was very well received in 2004 and which has a loyal fanbase, it's quite bad. Maybe I'm missing something. If so, tell me what it was. Because this is one of those movies they're now nostalgia-tripping to turn into a stage show. It's got a massive following.
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