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13 GOING ON 30
by Rachel Deahl
More than anything else, Jennifer Garner's
new romantic comedy, "13 Going on 30," is a nostalgic plug for a
gentler, kinder timeŠthe 1980s. The film, which begins with the awkward
thirteenth year of its heroine, Jenna Rink, reminds us that life really
must have been better when
Madonna ruled the charts and off-the-shoulder
sweatshirts were cool.
Pitting Garner as a 30-year-old with the
mindset of a teenager, "13 Going on 30" relies mostly on '80s nostalgia for
laughs. And, although most of the jokes fall flat, the film is surprisingly
infectious at times. Like the songs from the '80s that crop up throughout
(including "Jesse's Girl" and "Love is a Battlefield"), the end result is
embarrassingly enjoyable and totally hollow.
The best parts of "13 Going on 30" remain the
sequences in the beginning when Jenna is an awkward 13-year-old. In the
opening scene Jenna waits in line to take her class photo, which captures her
for the gangly, painfully ill at ease kid she is - retainer and all. Dreaming
of being popular and pretty, Jenna tries to shape herself in the vein of the
models she sees in her favorite magazine - a seemingly outdated '50s rag
called "Sparkle." But when her wish is granted and she wakes up as her
30-year-old self, she quickly learns that popularity and beauty do not make
for total happiness.
Initially "13 Going on 30" posits its
personality switch in an interesting trope. Unlike "Big," where Tom Hanks
wakes up as an adult with a clean slate in the same time and place, Jenna
comes to in the world of her future; a world in which she has turned into a
bitch. When she seeks out her former best friend and neighbor, and the only
link she has to her past, Matt (Mark Ruffalo), she's given an
unpleasant tour of her life. Jenna went on to become prom queen, dismiss her
old friends and become what she always wanted: a shallow, successful woman.
Now an editor at the magazine she read as a kid, Jenna even works alongside a
former middle school bully, the scheming Lucy (Judy Greer).
Although Jennifer Garner never shines like
Hanks did in "Big" as a childlike grown-up, she gets by with her goofy smile
and overplayed eagerness. But where "Big" tapped into the mystifying way
adults often act like kids, "13 Going on 30" never makes any interesting
statements about life, aside from saying it's better to be nice than mean.
Mostly the film fetishizes the '80s as Jenna
demonstrates she's as much a woman with a teenager's sensibilities as she is
one living in the wrong decade. Whether donning too much make-up, an
ill-conceived hairstyle or simply a mismatched outfit, Garner is constantly
trying to reclaim her past in her future.
Less amusing, and believable, is when Jenna
wins over a crowd of Manhattan partygoers with an impromptu dance number to
"Thriller" or dishes out love advice culled from Pat Benatar songs.
It's one thing to posit an attractive woman getting by on awkward, infantile charm but it's quite another to say adults are willingly and eagerly going to appreciate the line, "love is a battlefield."
Of course what this film loves about the '80s is what it
ultimately aspires to as well: mindless, silly fluff.
GRADE: B- KILL BILL VOLUME 2  In the opening scene of "Kill Bill Volume 2," Uma Thurman's The Bride is driving in a convertible, speaking to the audience, catching them up on the events that transpired in the first installment of Quentin Tarantino's two-part series, "Kill Bill Volume 1." Thurman, looking more like a movie star than a triumphant Samurai, speaks about her escapades in "Volume 1" in a glib postmodern way (she refers to them with adjectives critics heaped on the filmŠ 'some called it unnecessarily violentŠ') - seemingly as Uma Thurman the actress and not the character of The Bride.
This sly, playful opening sets a perfect tone
for Tarantino's second "Bill," a film that is intelligent, self-conscious,
beautiful, amusing and witty. Although the film falters and drags in its
second half, in its first half, "Kill Bill Volume 2" shows just how good
Quentin Tarantino can be as a writer/director, offering up dialog, imagery
and ruefully violent humor on par with his masterpiece, "Pulp Fiction."
Where "Volume 1" charted the beginning of The
Bride's revenge spree, "Volume 2" depicts its culmination. Not only does
"Volume 2" show the final leg of The Bride's quest to kill Bill, it also fills
in the gaps left by the first film.
Heavy on fight sequences and cartoonish gore,
"Volume 1" had little in the way of plot exposition and even less in the way
of character development. What we did know was that The Bride was a former
member of an elite group of assassins and Bill was her boss. For reasons
unknown, Bill gunned down The Bride on her wedding day, killing everyone in
her tiny El Paso church and leaving her (many months pregnant) with a bullet
in the head. After waking from her coma, The Bride set out to kill her former
associates and whack the crown jewel on her list, Bill himself.
Like "Pulp Fiction," "Volume 2" shows some of
the brilliant comedy and virtuosic violence Tarantino is so gifted at creating
on screen. In "Volume 1" the director seemed insistent on simply paying homage
as a fan - the film was full of nods to Asian culture (everything from Kung Fu
films to anime to Asian pop music).
Although the second "Bill" shows some of the
same (most wonderfully in a hilarious sequence in which The Bride learns to
fight from an ancient king fu master), the characters feel more like they
belong to Tarantino. Bill, The Bride, Budd (Michael Madsen), and Elle
Driver (Darryl Hannah) come more alive here (we even learn The Bride's
real name) than in the first film. The result is that the varied and oft gory
ends most of these characters meet becomes more memorable and, to some extent,
meaningful.
Tarantino also seems more intent on letting the
violence take a backseat to the story. In the second scene of the film, the
events that led up to the massacre in that El Paso church are played out. The
build-up shot in grainy black and white, is far from a quick, bloody shoot 'em
up. Instead Tarantino shows a long, drawn-out, overly civilized conversation
between The Bride and her former lover, Bill. Finally, when the assassins
arrive to clean house, Tarantino gently pulls his camera up and away from the
scene crime - he lets the audience hear the terrible deed that set the story
in motion.
In some ways, each part of Tarantino's "Bill"
duet has a little too much of one thing. "Volume 1" seemed like one long,
wonderfully choreographed, fight scene. It was skillfully made, but it felt
slight.
In "Kill Bill Volume 2" Tarantino adds
significantly more meat to his story and, even though his film gets bogged
down in self-reflexive repartee, "Volume 2" is still a thrilling work of
celluloid.
GRADE: A- |
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