Whose dream is it?

The romantic comedy 13 Going on 30, like most romantic comedies, is light and fluffy, with the classic formula of a heterosexual couple's being destined for each other since childhood, falling in love as adults, and marrying each other with the assumption of "living happily ever after". It's very sweet, saccharine sweet in fact. While deficiencies might exist in the plot, the humor written into the script does more than merely amuse the average viewer, for it serves as a vehicle for exposing hypocrisy, deceit, and crumbling values found in a particular setting.

Though it is by no means stellar as a movie, I did find the imaginative aspect of the "magic wishing sparkles" worthy of notice. Jenna Rink, an "ugly" teenager who longs to have larger breasts and be the most popular girl in school, is presented a doll's house constructed by her rather portly but good natured best friend Matt on her 13th Birthday. Matt also sprinkles some "magic dust" on the roof the doll's house, telling Jenna that the dust would make her wishes come true. When the most popular girls in school arrive and then, instead of socializing with her, slight her and play mean tricks on her, Jenna hides in a closet and cries, wishing that she could be "30 and beautiful". Unwittingly, some of the magic dust shakes off the doll's house, which she had stowed away in that very closet, and lands on Jenna's head as she makes her wish so that the next thing we see is that she wakes up, utterly confused, in a high-end apartment in New York City, wearing a seductive red lingerie that barely covers her voluptous body, as a naked man lies, softly cooing beside her on her bed.

Although Jenna is shocked to find out that she is suddenly 30 and sexually active, no one else seems to show any signs of seeing anything out of the ordinary. Jenna finds out that instead of the shy, socially awkward 13 year old girl she used to be, she is now a popular chief editor for a fashion magazine in New York. Furthermore, she is has also a social butterfly, and from her 13th birthday, had gathered a different circle of friends, cutting ties with her best friend Matt.

Over the course of the movie, Jenna tries to find her identity: though everyone believes her to be snotty Jenna Rink, the fashion editor, she is still very much an innocent 13 year old inside. She seeks Matt, who is a photographer by profession and also engaged to another woman, in order to ask him if he can help her understand what had happened to her overnight. Matt and Jenna rekindle their past friendship and slowly this blooms into something deeper, as Jenna realizes she is no longer a young girl, that she does harbor feelings for Matt that are above the platonic. After soliciting Matt's help with a project for her company, she learns the degree of how despicable her conduct was in the past. She lacked values, she was selfish, and she indulged in unethical behavior in terms of breaking company rules of confidentility. When her coworker finds out that she had been divulging her company's secrets to the competitor, she exposes Jenna in front of the whole staff, causeing her to resign her job. More than losing her job, Jenna is distraught at finding how reckless she had lived her life. In addition, she fears losing Matt, who is caught up with his plans for his impending wedding rather than smart over Jenna's betrayal about using him in a mercenary fashion.

On the day of his wedding, Jenna goes to her home and searches for the doll's house. Just as she shakes it, whispering a wish, some magic dust, which had continued to cling to its roof all those years, now sprinkles on her, giving her a chance to have her wish come true. She had upbraided herself for her behavior at work and to those she loved and wished she could get her old self back so that she can start over, erasing all the unhappiness she had caused to those around her. Moreover, she wanted a new beginning with Matt, for she has fallen in love with him.

As her wish comes true, Jenna Rink is once again 13 years old, hiding in her closet in her room. The 13 yeard old Matt comes to find her and she hugs him and willingly tells him she would hang out with him and that they could have so much fun together. She no longer covets beauty and popularity but simply the warmth of a sincere friendship, a frienship that continues and matures into love, ending in Jenna and Matt marrying years later.

Though it is 13 year old Jenna Rink who wished on the magic dust, this is reversed at the end of the film, for it is the 30 yeard old who wishes she could be 13 and start her life over. Perhaps it is the 30 year old who wants the innocence of her past. Perhaps it is the 30 year old who we have seen all along, trying to explain her selfish behavior, so she imagines her wishing over the dust as corrupting her when she was 13. Perhaps the older Jenna Rink was fooling us, the viewers, too, in that maybe the confusion she showed was actually feigned.

So whose story is it? The 13 year old's or the 30 year old's?