Jennifer Garner had best think twice about giving up her night job.

Alias may have established Garner as the queen of TV action, but 13 Going on 30 clearly proves she is no comedian.

Perhaps it's not entirely Garner's fault.

She is working with a bland, flat screenplay by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa and that's surprising, because 13 Going on 30 is clearly a rip-off of Tom Hanks' 1988 hit, Big.

Once again we have a young person yearning to be older, not realizing childhood is a time to be cherished.

Jenna (Garner), who is just turning 13, is a gawky youngster with braces and a burning desire to be one of the cool girls at school.

Her best friend, Matt, a chubby outsider himself, is an aspiring photographer.

They are two peas in a pod, but Jenna wants out and gets her wish when a package of magic dust falls over her on the night the nasty girls make a mockery of her birthday party.

Because this is a cookie-cutter screenplay, Jenna has to be the object of scorn by girls who developed a little faster and boys who are interested in them because they did.

Of course she'll get her revenge.

After all, she's just waiting to blossom into Jennifer Garner.

When Jenna awakens the day after her wish, she is in her own apartment with a sexy, naked guy.

More surprising to her is the fact she is gorgeous, sexy and has impressive breasts.

The movie exploits those breasts whenever possible, presumably in hopes of attracting male viewers and providing them with some diversion when they are coerced into attending what is clearly a woman's movie.

No, make that a young girl's movie. But then again, it really isn't that, either, because so many of the attempts at humour are clearly aimed at adults.

This ends up as a film that really hasn't defined its audience.

It's not silly enough to be a youth comedy and not sophisticated enough to be a satisfying adult movie.

When Hanks awoke in Big, he quickly got a job in a toy factory, where a kid really can function effectively.

Garner's Jenna discovers she's one of the editors of a fashion magazine called Poise, which the gawky Jenna so obviously lacks.

The scene that defined Big had Hanks dancing on a over-sized keyboard.

The corresponding scene in 13 Going on 30 finds Jenna enlivening a dull industry party by insisting everyone dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller.

It doesn't take long for Jenna to find Matt (Mark Ruffalo), who is now a photographer engaged to a demanding, controlling woman from whom he clearly needs to be rescued.

Poor Ruffalo keeps finding himself in underwritten roles opposite divas of the moment -- Gwyneth Paltrow in View From the Top, Meg Ryan in In the Cut, Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Sarah Polley in My Life Without Me -- when clearly he can share a film, as he did with Laura Linney in You Can Count on Me.

Garner tries desperately to be cute and awkward, but it's all posing. She really doesn't have the soul of a youngster that Jamie Lee Curtis managed to capture in Freaky Friday.

Like Garner, in its attempts to be loved at all costs, 13 Going on 30 alienates its audience in record time.

(This film is rated PG)

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