Big Deal  A good idea grows up into a missed opportunity  I am
going to give 13 Going on 30 too much credit, though it's hardly
worth the effort; Lord knows the filmmakers didn't put much into
it. It's a shame, as far as these things go, because what could
have been an engaging, maybe even enlightening story about the
unfairly high price a woman pays for conducting herself like a
man winds up as nothing more than a worthless, harmless and
ultimately charmless piffle. Even accidentally it might have
stood up as a subversive fable, because until its final moments,
when it just seems to surrender to the obvious and inevitable
for wont of any better solution, the movie allows room for
interpretation. But studio films, even those made by directors
whose previous works have engendered a modicum of faith and good
will, usually aren't about anything, except the pimping of empty
feel-good fantasies and ascending movie stars who fill the big
screen with a whole lot of nothing. To that extent, wow, 13
Going on 30 is awe