Barry | Archive | 2004 | August | 12
From the archive, first published Thursday 12th Aug 2004.
It's 1987 and 13-year-old Jenna Rink (Christa B. Allen) longs to be part of the cool set at school. This snobbish clique of girls, led by Lucy Wyman (Alexandra Kyle), call themselves the 'Six Chicks'.
When Jenna asks them to her birthday party, they show their true colours and play a nasty prank on her. Only her chubby best friend Matt (Sean Marquette) stays behind to comfort her. But Jenna is so upset by the girls' rejection she is horrid to Matt. This is particularly unkind, as he has lovingly made her a dolls house sprinkled with magic dust as her birthday present. She ends up hiding in the cupboard saying, "I want to be 30 and flirty and thriving".
As luck would have it, some of the magic dust lands on her hair and she wakes up in 2004 as a 30-year-old (now Jennifer Garner) but still with the mind and temperament of a thirteen year old. She finds herself in a plush Manhattan flat with a hunky naked man who is calling her 'Sweetie Bottom'. Appalled, she hot foots it out of the flat and straight into to the now grown up Lucy (Judy Greer).
It turns out that the intervening 17 years actually have happened and she and Lucy are editors of the fashion magazine Poise. Unable to take it all in, Jenna decides to look up Matt (now Mark Ruffalo). To her amazement geeky Matt has slimmed down and is now pretty cool but sadly engaged to be married to someone else. Before long, Jenna realises that over the years she has made her way up the ladder of success by being selfish, backstabbing and manipulative. Now she needs to go back and undo her many cruel mistakes.
It would be sensible to avoid the trailer as it gives away the film's only funny lines. The script, by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, the writing team behind What Women Want is uninspired and formulaic.
Only Garner - all wonderful gawky enthusiasm - and Andy Sirkis (fresh from playing Gollum) as her priceless boss Richard do their best with it. One of the most overacted films I have seen for a while, it nonetheless manages to be quite entertaining in a light-hearted way. The children are sweet and brilliantly cast, looking just like their adult selves.
Director Gary Winick has managed to convey a jolly level of high spiritedness but the film could hardly be called skilful.
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