I just finished watching 13 Going on 30 last night with Jennifer Garner. Honestly it wasn’t a half-bad movie. It’s about a 13 year old girl who hates her life and wishes at her 13th birthday party she was 30. The next instant, she is, but it’s not the same concept as Big. Her 13 year old self is implanted 17 years later inside of her 30 year old self. She has none of the memories of the 30 year old, but is able to quickly find out what’s been going on through friends, her job, and her apartment. The movie was kind of cute (and Mark Ruffalo is definitely kind of cute), but while watching it last night, one thing really grated on me.

(Spoilers ahead if you’re ever planning on seeing this)
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At 30, Jenna is a high-profile magazine…something. Not the editor-in-chief, but something important, I can’t remember, at Poise magazine. The competition, Sparkle magazine has been getting Poise’s ideas for the last 7 months and nobody knows who’s doing it. In one key scene, the mean girl (who is now Jenna’s best friend because it turns out Jenna turned into a big ‘ol bitch in high school) is digging through Jenna’s office and finds envelopes from Sparkle magazine, addressed to Jenna, at work. In the envelopes it says something like “thanks for all the ideas, you’ll make a great editor-in-chief here at Sparkle.” Horror of horrors, it’s Jenna who’s been selling out her magazine!

I have 2 problems with this. First, if you’re going to sell out your company, would you really have the rival company you’re working with send you letters AT YOUR JOB, and then have incriminating evidence in them? Second, why would you actually keep those letters in your unlocked desk drawer towards the top where anyone can find them? This is supposed to be 2004 too, and I saw nobody at her company using email for anything - it was all done by snail mail.

The writers obviously needed to tie up the loose ends before getting to the feel-good ending, but I’m thinking they took a major shortcut with this one.