‘13 Going on 30’ With Bill Simmons and Juliet Litman

Key takeaways

• The hosts argue "13 Going on 30" has grown more popular over time rather than faded, citing TikTok mom-daughter Halloween costumes, Judy Greer and Mark Ruffalo hearing about it constantly in public, and its status as a tightly-made 97-minute film with almost no wasted scenes.
• Jennifer Garner's career trajectory gets extended treatment: she spent her twenties in flop shows like "Significant Others" and "Time of Your Life" before "Alias" broke her out, and this film arrived at the perfect moment—right as she started dating Ben Affleck, whose public rebound from Bennifer/J.Lo culminated in her 100%-approval debut at a 2004 World Series game.
• Simmons ranks body-switch comedies, placing "13 Going on 30" at 8 out of 10 behind "Big" (a 10) and "Being John Malkovich" (a 9), while dismissing misfires like Rob Schneider's "The Hot Chick" (a 1) and Adam Sandler's "The Cobbler."
• Both hosts trace the death of the 2000s rom-com boom, arguing the genre ran out of fresh female leads after Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock's generation, got overtaken by Apatow-era raunch comedies like "Old School" and "Anchorman," and increasingly leaned on high-concept gimmicks like "The Break-Up."
• The soundtrack (featuring Thriller, Vienna by Billy Joel, and the Go-Go's) gets called one of the best in movie history, with Simmons revealing Vienna took 28 years to find its perfect cinematic use and calling it one of pop music's most underrated songs.
• Mark Ruffalo reportedly almost quit during Thriller rehearsals because he hated the choreography so much, and a deleted scene had him screaming "They knew about Sparkle Magazine!"; a line the hosts joke would have made the movie a Hall of Fame classic.

Notable moments

• Litman ranks Garner second only to Sandra Bullock on her "take a bullet for" list of actresses.
• Simmons reveals Ruffalo shot "Collateral" and "13 Going on 30" simultaneously in 2004; two tonally opposite films.
• Roger Ebert's two-star review gets read aloud, joking the office politics made no sense for a "13-year-old mind."
• Wesley Morris's old Boston Globe review is quoted calling the Thriller dance scene's "amaturness" not cute but "scary"; a word the hosts suspect he invented.
• Litman notes Garner and Ben Affleck reportedly fell in love filming "Daredevil" in 2002, complicating the Bennifer timeline.
• The hosts debate whether "13 Going on 30" is even a rom-com, with Litman arguing it's actually a teen movie disguised as one since the romance requires time travel to resolve.
• Simmons recounts his daughter singing Vienna in a fifth-grade talent show as one of his proudest parenting moments.

Time saved: 2 hours, 5 minutes.