When one is in that preadolescent and adolescent phase in which the flesh prison feels particularly confining, the only thing desired is to break free in every sense. For most people living in the United States (at least once upon a time), the only place to do that is New York City. Such is the case, too, for 13 Going on 30‘s heroine, Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner). As she struggles to live a suburban New Jersey existence in which she’s anything but accepted by the proverbial Heathers of her school a.k.a. the Six Chicks, helmed by Lucy “Tom-Tom” Wyman (Judy Greer, ultimately), Jenna wishes to be “Thirty, Flirty and Thriving”–per the article title from her favorite fashion magazine, Poise. Thanks to her best friend, Matt Flamhaff (Mark Ruffalo), the wish ends up coming true as a result of the magic wishing dust he sprinkles atop a dream house he hand-crafted for her in honor of her thirteenth birthday. And since, in movie world, the only time wishes can come true is one’s birthday (see also: Teen Witch), her “dream” comes true the following day, complete with magical move to New York in a Fifth Avenue apartment.
Flummoxed as to the person she has transcended into over the course of the seventeen-year blackout, it doesn’t occur to Jenna that perhaps living in New York has turned her into a completely amoral cunt rag. To boot, she still hangs out with Tom-Tom (now just Lucy), who also works with her as a co-editor at the magazine. Yes, Jenna has managed to claw her way to the top of the editorial food chain as well as finagle an attractive but dumb athlete boyfriend named Alex Carlson (Samuel Ball). Yet everything inside her screams to find the only person who can make sense of this strange ordeal, Matty. Alas, the two haven’t been friends since that thirteenth birthday party (during which his attempt to kiss her is rebuffed), so she must track him down in Greenwich Village, where she finds he is living the average nightmare of every suburbanite that moves to New York: being a struggling artist (specifically, photographer). Would that we could all struggle in an apartment in Greenwich Village, however.
As Jenna works to piece together the missing fragments of the puzzle called her vapid existence, Poise‘s editor-in-chief, Richard Kneeland (Andy Serkis), rails against his staff over the fact that their rival publication, Sparkle, keeps managing to scoop their exact cover stories and celebrities, causing sales to plummet. Wanting to help revive the clout of the publication using her thirteen-year-old brain as the ideal target to appeal to, Jenna enlists Matt’s photographic skills to aid in shooting the images for a high school-themed spread. Lucy, all the while, has been plotting to go in for the kill using the very strategy that non-thirteen-year-old Jenna had been planning to all along: continue to sink Poise by leaking every idea to Sparkle in exchange for the latter inviting her to join their team as editor-in-chief once Poise is sunk. Horrified to learn that her adult self would be capable of such conniving subterfuge, Jenna is, once more, forced to take a harsh look at the person she has become while in New York. The person she thought she wanted to be so badly: glamorous, “flourishing”–at the top of the ladder. Her youthful naïveté, alas, did not account for the gradual dismantling of one’s conscience that it takes to prosper in the city most indicative of capitalism on steroids. For her to believe that “thriving” there could mean anything other than embracing one’s inner Mr. Hyde was telling of just how much innocence our pre-New York selves can possess. And while, sure, the little twats that move to New York now have it infinitely easier than generations past as a result of the smartphones and trust funds that make them so flaccid, and, in turn, the city equally so, it does not change the fact that we are all prone to succumbing to the Jenna Rink phenomenon: living our greatest dream and worst nightmare due to inhabiting a nexus so detrimental to the moral compass.
New York can’t make a person bad, but it’s certainly capable of testing one’s propensities for the dark side to the point of transforming them into a being they hardly recognize in comparison to their former sweet, childlike self–the one they wanted so desperately to be rid of so as to shed one skin in favor of a thicker, more impervious one. And yes, that’s just what New York will do: toughen, numb. The problem with that is, when one finally realizes what’s happening, it often becomes too late to turn back time the way Jenna is able to in order to correct her error in going down the so-called path of success. Which, yes, by New York definitions, frequently means being an asshole. It’s not adapt or die. It’s be a dick or die. Or, you know, just move/let yourself be chased out by the demons begging to possess you.
