This is an odd collection of the new and not so - just a few things I've seen lately in a season when there's really been so little to bother seeing.
The plot of 13 GOING ON 30-as I hope you can guess-involves 13-year-old Jenna (dissed by the popular girls, embarrassed in front of the school hunk, and adored by her chubby neighbor Matt) slamming herself in a closet and wishing to be "30, flirty, and thriving" (the tag line of her favorite magazine, Poise). Add in "wishing dust" and POOF she wakes up the next day as ALIAS star Jennifer Garner. Don't ask. But the idea that I could slam myself in a closet and wake up as Jennifer was so intriguing to me that I still can just barely stop myself from trying it. That Jennifer is so cute when she smiles that it made me think they should let her smile and kid around more often on ALIAS, even though she's always in a life-threatening situation or involved in a tragically inappropriate office romance.
Anyway, as 30-year-old Jenna quickly (and humorously) learns, she's now the co-editor of Poise with her best friend, the grown-up leader of the brat pack that sent her into the closet in the first place. Yeah, don't ask. And she has her own closet full of great stuff in her lower 5th Avenue apartment. On the downside, it turns out Jenna also is a total bitch. So, with her inner 13-year-old still fresh, Jenna goes about trying to make things right in her grown-up world. If you have any doubts about how it turns out, all I can say is, wow.
The film has the intention of making one think,
"hmmm, what could I have done differently?" That, along with the catchy 80s soundtrack, make it of potentially more interest to the 30 than the 13 set. And though I'm sure there is something I could have done differently to end up in that fabulous lower 5th apartment as editor of a second-rate Vogue, I don't know if it would be worth the price of being mean and shallow. What? Who am I kidding? Why am I even talking to you?
In the moral universe of 13 GOING ON 30, the struggle is between nice pretty girls and mean pretty girls. It's a simple universe, and the fact that it's obvious that nice will win was somehow reassuring in the messy moral universe that is our own.
Oy, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND was a mess of a movie, and while I could appreciate its oddball take on romance, the writer and director just got way too carried away with how clever they think they are. I imagine most audiences were lost halfway through, which is too bad. The performances were all good and I think the actors (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet chief among them) are the main reason to sit through the innumerable twists and turns of a story that's actually quite simple: the sweet idea that love involves a certain amount of destiny. Or, the cynical you could say it tries to explain why we end up falling in love with the same person (or type of person) over and over. Or, you could just say, blech, who cares, and start thinking about what bills you had to pay when you got home or try to remember where you'd parked your car or decide where you were going for dinner after. I'm afraid that's the risk taken when the people in charge of the movie forget about the audience and get bogged down in their own idiosyncrasies.
Despite its odd title, SEARCHING FOR DEBRA WINGER is a winning little documentary by the improbable documentarian Rosanna Arquette. Having reached 40 and long since grown out of being known as the girl the Toto song was about, Rosanna decides to ask an interesting batch of her fellow "older" actresses about their experiences as women, mothers, lovers, and people in a business not known for its kindness to those who can remember clearly events that took place before 1985. The documentary has several strengths, not least its collection of amazing women - the actresses include Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda on the "older" end, Gwyneth Paltrow and Patricia Arquette on the "younger" end, and Meg Ryan, Kelly Lynch, Darryl Hannah, Charlotte Rampling, Emmanuelle Beart, Sharon Stone, Robin Wright Penn, Alfre Woodard, Ally Sheedy, and Salma Hayek in the middle. Their experiences overlap, of course, but each also has her own story. It's interesting that most-noticeably not including Melanie Griffith and Jane Fonda-are resistant to the plastic surgery idea. Let's concede this - they all look better than good (really, where has Ally Sheedy been?). What they share that most of us don't is amazing bone structure and invitations to Cannes. What they share with most of us is the challenge of moving through life and remaining engaged and relevant in a society that every day places more value on the "experience" and "consumer choices" of people barely wet behind the ears. Oh, yeah, and Debra Winger really does show up, gives some thoughtful input, and looks fabulously like a 1940s movie star.