13 Going on 30(2004)

Plot Summary

• Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner/Christa B. Allen), a girl celebrating her 13th birthday in 1987, wishes to be 30 in hopes that it would help her overcome her unpopularity at school. Jenna especially wants to join the Six Chicks, a school clique led by Lucy "Tom-Tom" Wyman (Judy Greer/Alexandra Kyle), who takes advantage of Jenna's desire to be accepted by manipulating her. Jenna's best friend, Matt Flamhaff (Mark Ruffalo/Sean Marquette), gives her a doll dream house he built for her and a packet of magic wishing dust for her birthday, which is sprinkled on the roof of the house.Tom-Tom dashes Jenna's hopes of joining the Six Chicks by pulling a cruel practical joke on her during a game of "Seven Minutes in Heaven". Mistakenly thinking Matt was responsible, Jenna gets angry with him and barricades herself in the closet where she puts the Dream House. She cries and rocks backs and forth, bumping into the wall by chance, wishing to be "Thirty and flirty and thriving". The wishing dust from the dream house sprinkles on her, and seconds later, Jenna awakens as a 30-year-old woman living in a Fifth Avenue apartment, without her friends or family. It is now 2004, but Jenna has no memory of the 17 years that have passed since her 13th birthday.30-year-old Jenna's tough-as-nails new best friend Lucy -- no longer nicknamed Tom-Tom after plastic surgery -- drives her to her work office. Upon further investigation, Jenna learns that she now works as an editor for Poise, her favorite fashion magazine when she was a teenager. Without her best friend from 1987, and frightened like the teenager she has been, Jenna asks her assistant to track down Matt, who now works as a struggling photographer. To her dismay, Jenna learns that she and "Mattie" have been estranged since high school when Jenna became a popular girl and even Prom Queen, and that Matt is now engaged to a woman named Wendy Collins (Lynn Collins).While enjoying her freedom and great clothes, Jenna stumbles through a grown-up world, learning enough of life to hang with and advise other teenagers. She saves an office party by leading the guests, including Matt, in an improvised "Thriller" line dance. But her slowly emerging past reveals that she has become a shadow of the sweet girl she has been. She became estranged with her parents, and she is having an affair with the husband of Tracy Hansen from the art department. Not only is she generally despised by her co-workers, but she is also suspected of giving her magazine's ideas to a competing publication, Sparkle. Jenna slowly realizes that the person she has become is neither reliable nor amiable, and unknowingly begins to reverse the situation by distancing herself from her shallow boyfriend, acting kinder and more honest to her co-workers and friends, and trying to restore her relationship with Matt.After Jenna overhears Lucy badmouthing her to a co-worker, she sadly realizes that what she thought she wanted wasn't important after all. She heads back to her childhood home in New Jersey to reunite with her parents and reminisce by looking through school yearbooks and other items from her school days. These inspire her on her return to Manhattan. Over several excursions and working together on a magazine presentation, Jenna becomes friends with Matt again. Even though Matt has a fiancée in Chicago who is eager for him to move there, Jenna and Matt kiss during a nighttime walk and slowly begin to fall for each other.After arranging a magazine photo shoot with Matt, then making a successful presentation for a planned renewing for Poise, Jenna prepares for the renewing when she gets bad news from the publisher: Poise is shutting down because the work she put into the relaunch ended up in Sparkle. Jenna learns she was responsible for sabotaging Poise from within by sending their material to Sparkle for months. When Lucy learns this, she cons Matt into signing over the photo rights from the relaunch shoot to her. She accepts the position of Sparkle's editor-in-chief, using Jenna's work as her own -- as she did when the girls were in high school.When an already-distraught Jenna discovers Matt is getting married that day, she rushes to his house and begs him to call off the wedding. Matt explains that he already knew of Lucy's deception and has never trusted her since childhood, but he cannot reunite with Jenna now because too many years have passed. From his closet, he pulls the dream house he made 17 years before, and gives it back to her despite them being estranged since then. Jenna informs Matt sobbing that she loves him and that he's her best friend; Matt responds once he confesses that he has always loved her. Jenna leaves as the wedding begins, crying over the dream house and wishing she could return to 1987 as she closes her teary eyes. Without Jenna's knowledge, some remnants of the wishing dust on the dream house swirl around her into the breeze, and her wish is granted.When Jenna opens her eyes, she reawakens back in 1987 on her 13th birthday with a second chance from the dust, where no time has passed. This time, when Matt finds her huddled alone in the closet, she happily embraces and kisses him. She confronts the snobbish Lucy ("Tom-Tom"), destroys the homework Lucy had manipulated her into writing, and spills juice over Tom-Tom's outfit before happily leading Matt away. At a future date (2004), the adult Jenna and Matt emerge as newlyweds and move into a suburban house identical to the dream house Matt built when Jenna was 13 -- sharing a packet of their favorite childhood candy, Razzles.

Storyline

• 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 dream apartment, a fabulous wardrobe, an athlete boyfriend, a dream job, and superstar friends, this can't be a better life. Unfortunately, Jenna realizes that this is not what she wanted. The only one that she needs is her childhood best friend, Matt, a boy that she thought destroyed her party. But when she finds him, he's a grown up, and not the same person that she knew. — popdivaprincess3000 More than anything in the world, the unpopular schoolgirl, Jenna Rink, yearns to grow up and be cool. Then, on her otherwise catastrophic thirteenth birthday, a sprinkle of dust and a dash of magic grant Jenna's wish, and just like that, the gawky teenager skips seventeen whole years, and wakes up in 2004 Manhattan as a curvaceous fashionista, and editor of Poise, her favourite magazine. Now, an exciting new life awaits the wide-eyed girl, who has to figure out how to be a woman; find out what happened to Matt, her long-lost best friend from school, and see through successful Jenna's beautiful facade. Will glamorous Jenna ever find out where things got bad? Above all, is this new life what she wished for? — Nick Riganas On her thirteenth birthday, Jenna Rink makes a desperate wish to escape the awkwardness of adolescence and be "thirty, flirty, and thriving." The next morning, she wakes up in a luxury apartment in New York City as a successful 30-year-old magazine editor. Disoriented by her sudden transformation and lacking memory of the intervening seventeen years, Jenna must navigate the complexities of her adult career and social life. As she attempts to reconcile her childhood values with her new reality, she reconnects with her estranged childhood best friend, Matt, and begins to discover that adult life is not as straightforward as she had imagined. — BhanuP-4960 More than anything in the world, Jenna Rink has two wishes - to become one of the school's cool girls, and to be thirty - rather than be coming up to thirteen and hanging around with uncool Matt. After her disastrous birthday party, an accidental sprinkle of magic dust makes both wishes come true and she finds herself at thirty as a highly successful magazine editor in Manhattan. Luckily, she locates Matt for help on how her new world works, but as she finds out how she has behaved since that birthday party, she increasingly discovers someone she thoroughly dislikes. — J-26