"13 Going On 30"(2004) is romantic comedy following a 13 year old , Jenna, who wishes to be 30 on her 13th birthday when her opportunity to become popular with a group of girls in her school, her wish is granted, where Jenna is fast forwarded to life at 30 where she has to cope with being an adult and having a job which seems to be more of a struggle than she though, and is shocked to realise that she has become a bad person, she then has to seek help from her childhood best friend Matt who she finds out she drifted from, and now has to put her life back in order.
The film opens with a bright blue background with pink and green sparkles, immediately illustrating to the audience that the film is seemingly "girly" due to the stereotypically feminine colour scheme, we also hear the song "Head Over Heels" which is a preppy rock like song which would stereotypically be related to girls and younger possibly teenaged people due to the taste in music. The speechless gradually fade to reveal a blue sky with clouds, to which are revealed to be the background of a school photo that is about to be taken where we see in a close up shot a young "nerdy" looking girl emerges and sits down in front of the background, The camera continues to pan out showing the girl to be wearing bright pink jeans and top, suggesting the teenager to be "girly", but her mannerisms seem to be quite shy looking as she seems to look at the ground avoiding eye contact with other people and clings to her books. Behind her we see on a sign that the year is 1987 so the film is being set at a past date.
As the photographer walks back to the camera he instructs Jenna to turn around a bit, but instead calls her gina, as Jenna tries to correct him he takes the picture, then revealing to the audience an unattractive picture of Jenna mid sentence with her hair sticking out. This makes the audience think that Jenna isn't very popular due to her having her name forgotten a number of times, and also makes the audience sympathise with Jenna due to her bad school photo and the fact the she has braces.
As we see Jenna in a medium wide shot walking through the corridor looking down at her unfortunate school photo, we see that this is possibly a high school movie, no one seems to paying much attention to her and makes her seem somewhat invisible to the rest of her school and makes it seem as though she doesn't have a lot if not any friend. We are then shown in a medium shot a blu leaving a classroom taking a picture of people around him coming across as somewhat annoying to the rest of the people in the corridor. He then sneaks up on Jenna and takes a picture with her, she asks for no more pictures smiling, to which Matt (boy with the camera) reveals that it is Jenna's 13th birthday.
We then see a wide shot of the corridor with people moving to the sides making room for a group of "popular" looking girls who appear to be envied by Jenna as she looks longingly at them as they approach her in slow motion, The girls appear to be "girly" as well but also a bit more chic than Jenna, the group of girls all have the same hair style grouping them together as the same personality's, they all seem to have the same moody expression on their faces making the audience not take a huge liking to them. They then make a snide remark to Matt making the audience view them as the typical rude girls, They then somehow get to trick Jenna into doing their group report for them so that they can attend her party, they also introduce the audience to an apparent love interest for Jenna "Chris", who lights up when the leader of the mean group says that he wants to come to her party, making the audience completely dislike her character as they can see she is using Jenna to get out of doing her work.
The camera then cuts to a high angled shot of Jenna and Matt walking home with each other making the audience see that this is Jenna's only friend. As they talk we hear that Jenna's dream is to be a 6 chick, But her friend seem completely against her doing what she can to be one as he believes they are using Jenna, making the audience value Matt as an intelligent, caring friend. We then see another high angled shot as Jenna and Mat are revealed to be neighbours going to their separate houses.
13 Going On 30 is a film that I wanted to be apart of when i was younger as i wanted to see what I would be doing when i was 30, and i think is aimed at more of a young teen audience due to Jenna's age, as this is what is being shown to be a 13 year olds dream to be older.
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