One-upping the cool chicks, 13-year-old gets her wishGarner shines as a teen inside adult

Fifty years from now an anthropologist studying adolescence at the turn of the 21st century could do worse than to immerse herself in a double-bill of thirteen and 13 Going on 30. These movies about smart, insecure seventh graders who think the cool girls have it going on are powerful looks at the perils of peer pressure.

But while thirteen crawls through broken glass, 13 Going on 30 walks on sunshine - in Jennifer Garner's kitten heels.

As an awkward teen granted her wish to be a groovy grown-up, Garner delivers an irresistible, star-making performance that recalls those of that wholesome hooker Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and guileless innocent Tom Hanks in Big.

The latter film is obviously an influence on screenwriters Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, who here recast the Hanks hit with a girl in a woman's bod.

While 13 Going on 30 is too formulaic to sustain the delicacy of emotion that gave Big its appeal, it has tour-de-farce moments that made their What Women Want such a monster hit. In fact, 13 Going on 30 might better be titled What Girls Want. The list can be reduced to the three Bs: beauty, breasts and boys - preferably in that order.

Jenna Rink (Christa B. Allen) is a gauche seventh grader in suburban New Jersey circa 1987, one who very much admires the popular girls, known as the Six Chicks. Barbie blondes virtually indistinguishable from one another, the Six Chicks are self-anointed Heathers of style who have little use for Jenna except as a homework resource.

Although the flat-chested, ladder-legged Jenna has her own clumsy grace, more than anything she craves acceptance by the Six Chicks. They think she's a loser and that her lovestruck next-door-neighbor, Matt Flamhaff (Sean Marquette), is, like, totally grody.

So instead of enjoying her 13th birthday and Matt's homemade present, Jenna wishes she were a Six Chick. Entirely bypassing the awkward age, Jenna wakes up 17 years later (in Garner's body) a beauty with breasts and boyfriend - and a 13-year-old's wholesomeness inside a cynic's conniving mind.

In the intervening years, nice little Jenna has become a ruthless Heather of style, managing editor of Poise magazine, boss of Six Chick Lucy (Judy Greer) and the most-feared woman in Manhattan. Jenna doesn't recognize herself and wants to find why she and that nice Matt (grown up into Mark Ruffalo) grew apart.

Director Gary Winick, who previously made the low-key character study Tadpole, has the difficult task of showing a sympathetic 13-year-old in the body of an unsympathetic grown-up. Garner is a delight, a completely accessible personality in completely forbidding clothes.

While the film's theme would seem to be Jenna's reconsideration of the road not taken, too much of the movie celebrates the well-worn path - limos! clothes! celeb friends! - of the road travelled by shallow Cosmo Girls and Six Chicks. This is an inherent contradiction in the movie that not even Garner's considerable charm can reconcile.

Another contradiction: Though the film's theme is both entertaining and valuable for pre-teens, regrettably its sexual candor and drug references are not suitable for those under 12.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey

at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

13 Going on 30

*** (out of four stars)

Produced by Gina Mathews, Susan Arnold and Donna Arkoff Roth, directed by Gary Winick, written by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, photography by Don Burgess, music by Theodore Shapiro, distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 37 mins.

Jenna Rink. . . Jennifer Garner

Matt Flamhaff. . . Mark Ruffalo

Lucy Wyman. . . Judy Greer

Richard Kneeland. . . Andy Serkis

Young Jenna . . . Christa B. Allen

Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual candor)

Playing at: area theaters