Review of Thirteen

Thirteen (2003)
6/10
A puzzle
30 March 2008
I don't want to miss the point of this film. I know the point of it is the pressures on today's adolescents, and their reactions to some of those pressures, and the effects on families in those circumstances. And if you're going to illustrate those points then you have to show cause and effect, and that means unpleasantness, and shouting matches, and drugs, and manipulation, and under-age sex and so on. You have to have those things in the movie, I get it.

But for the film to have the impact it should have, you need to care about those people. You have to see the possibility of redemption in them (even if the film is a tragedy, whereby they fail to be redeemed, the possibility must be there). And we never really saw enough of Tracy before peer pressure kicked in and changed her to an obnoxious brat going off the rails to have any sort of opinion as to whether she was redeemable or not.

I thought the performances were good (if a little one-note in places), but the script was underdeveloped. Nikki Reed shows some promise as both (co-)writer and performer, but needs rather more guidance than she got here in both areas.
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