13 Going On 30 (2004)

This is a great, and completely enjoyable movie. The plot may be far fetched but somehow it worked.
Jenna Rink (Christa B. Allen) is the dorky, thirteen year-old girl struggling to get through middle school. Her biggest dream is to become popular and join the cliche known as the six chicks. Nevertheless, she invites these nasty girls to her birthday party that evening after she offers to write their school report for them. They even promise that they will invite Chris, a popular guy, to the party as well. At the party, her even dorkier and heavyset friend Matt (Sean Marquette) arrives and gives her a beautifully made dream house which she likes though she knows that the six chicks will make fun of it, so after it is sprinkled with some magic dust, she shoves it into her closet.
The party does not go well. Promising that Chris will meet her in the closet, Jenna goes in there and then all her friends leave. Along the way, Matt returns and the chicks tell him that Jenna is waiting for him in the closet. Instead, she pushes him out of the closet, and then returns, depressed that everything has left. She wishes that she was fit and fabulous and 30.
Then she wakes up. Jenna (Jennifer Garner) is in an apartment that she doesn't recognize and is horrified that a naked guy is in her shower. Then she is picked up for her job at Poise Magazine by her friend Lucy (Judy Greer), but she doesn't want to get the car because she doesn't get into a stranger's car. She finds out that her wish came true. Jenna is now 30, but though the last seventeen years of her life happened, she has no memory of them. She doesn't remember stealing the idea and then firing her assistant Charlotte. She doesn't remember never telling her secretary to never tell her when her parents called. And she certainly doesn't remember that she and Matt (Mark Ruffalo) are no longer friends.
She finds Matt. He is living a much less glamorous life than she. He lives in a modest apartment compared to her and works as a freelance photographer. She also learns later that he is also engaged to a news anchorwoman (or person) from Chicago, Wendy (Lynn Collins). Naturally, this news upsets her.
Meanwhile, Jenna adapts to her new life. She enjoys the perks of being an adult, buying clothes and partying until all hours of the morning. But she finds her boyfriend, Alex (Samuel Ball) gross. She doesn't want to have sex with him, though he is quite willing. She tells her secretary that he can call her back in like a zillion years.
Poise Magazine is also having trouble selling its issues. Thus, the owner (Andy Serkis, in the flesh) is told that it must be redesigned. Lucy is secretly plotting against Jenna, forming her own. Certainly she is not above her scheming ways from middle school, as she was the leader of the six chicks, then called Tom-Tom. Luckily, Jenna overhears this and is able to come up with her own idea and even brings Matt in on it. She designs everything like a yearbook. Matt is doing the photographs. Though he is due to be married in only a few weeks, they spend a lot of time together and even share a kiss. She describes the moment in great detail to her new teenage friend, Becky (Renee Olmstead). She also tells them that "love is a battlefield". This inspires them. But everything comes crashing down. The adult Jenna is a not nice person and is even plotting against her company, giving secrets to its main competitor, Sparkle. Though her new idea is a success, Lucy lies to Matt about the whole thing and takes the idea straight to the competitor, which will leave Jenna at the dying magazine, which at one point she had tried to bring down. And, she has no boyfriend. She does go to Matt's wedding and says that she loves him and he tells her the same thing, but they cannot be together; he will still marry Wendy. He does give her the house he made for her thirteenth birthday. She goes out to the front doorstep and cries. The wind starts blowing and more of the magic dust blows on her. She is thirteen again. And alone in the closet. Matt still comes in but she bounces on him and kisses him, which makes him happy. She then drags him up the stairs after ripping the report she wrote in half and tells him that they are late. "For what?" he asks. Though she never answers, we know that they are late for the rest of their lives, just waiting to begin. The two get married and our last shot is of them getting settled into their new house, eating a candy from the 1980s.
Though the concept has been done before, it is refreshing to see it done this way. Jennifer Garner is also a revelation, doing a great job in a difficult role. She is a teenager trapped in the body of a grown woman, and she realizes that though she once longed to be grown, she realizes that she missed out on so much and it was not worth it. All the pain would be worth it if she could just experience going up normally. Judy Greer is great as the best friend, though in this case, she is really the worst enemy. Mark Ruffalo does well, as you can just see his heart break when Jenna finally tells him that she loves him. This is easily the best romantic-comedy of the past ten years and one that I will watch again and again. Grade: B+