By: Sasha Deans

*Warning: this review contains spoilers

’13 Going on 30′ is a romantic comedy and a coming-of-age movie that I really enjoyed watching. It’s about a teenage girl named Jenna Rink who feels awkward and unhappy on her 13th birthday. She’s not popular and just wants to fit in with the “cool kids” at school. At her kind of terrible birthday party, she makes a wish to skip all the hard and embarrassing parts of being a teenager and become “thirty, flirty, and thriving.” Then something magical happens and when she wakes up the next morning, she’s suddenly 30 years old, living in a big fancy apartment in New York City, in the year 2004!

At first, Jenna is super excited. She has a glamorous job at a fashion magazine, lots of stylish clothes, and everyone seems to think she’s super cool. But as she starts living her adult life, she realizes that being grown-up isn’t as perfect as she thought. Even though she has success and money, she also became a person she doesn’t like, someone mean, selfish, and not very nice to others and someone she just never wanted to be or thought she would be. She lost touch with her family and even with her best childhood friend, Matt Flamhaff.

Jenna finds Matt again, and even though he’s all grown up too, she realizes how important he was to her. He reminds her what it’s like to be kind, to love someone, and to be true to yourself and be a good person. She starts to wish she could go back and make better choices. Things get even more emotional when she realizes that she’s fallen in love with Matt all over again but he’s already engaged to someone else!

In the end, Jenna gets another magical chance. She goes back to being 13 again, right after she made the wish. This time, she doesn’t make the same mistakes. She makes different choices and stays close to Matt. The movie ends with a sweet and happy flash-forward where Jenna and Matt are all grown up and getting married. It’s a really nice ending that shows how second chances can change everything.

Some important themes in the movie are:

• Be careful what you wish for: growing up too fast isn’t always a good thing.
• Stay true to yourself: popularity and success don’t matter if you lose who you are.
• Friendship and love are more important than fame and popularity.
• People can change and it’s never too late to try and make things right.

I think ’13 Going on 30′ is funny, sweet, and kind of magical. It teaches some really good lessons, but it also has fun music, cool clothes, and funny moments. I would recommend it to teenagers and adults and kids of the 90s because they would definitely relate because it shows how growing up isn’t always what you expect, and being a good person matters more than anything.

You can watch ’13 Going on 30′ on Netflix.