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100The most powerful of all recent wayward-youth sagas; indeed, it's tough to recall the last such drama that packed as much emotional clout.
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100The result is a disturbing look into the so-called Wonder Years of adolescence, with convincing, award-worthy performances from each of its key players: Hunter, Wood, and Reed.
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100With an authenticity that is tender and merciless, the movie shows you what it looks like when youth rebellion becomes a form of fascism.
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91Despite the raw gut-punch of its direction, its power lies in compassion, not sensationalism.
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90It feels like real life unfolding before your eyes.
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90This movie is an emotionally coherent work--a burning experience of desperation and fleeting exhilaration. [1 September 2003, p. 130]
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89Just plain unforgettable.
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88Who is this movie for? Not for most 13-year-olds, that's for sure. The R rating is richly deserved, no matter how much of a lark the poster promises. Maybe the film is simply for those who admire fine, focused acting and writing.
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88An excellent, unforgettable film.
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88One of the most honest and harrowing depictions of female adolescence ever put to film.
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88Despite its shock value, Thirteen rises above dysfunctional-family-drama cliches, thanks to the truthfulness of its script and the keen eye of a sympathetic director.
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88Unlike most other teen cautionary tales, Thirteen does not accuse merely one villain for the corruption of a minor.
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88A smart movie that does not simplify or candy-coat the rigors of the teenage years.
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88Despite Hunter's terrific acting, the mom seems too unaware.
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80Hunter is superb as the alcoholic mom trying to keep her life from falling apart, and Wood and Reed are scarily convincing as delinquents.
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80What could have become a heinous TV movie instead delivers the moving and relatable experience of being an emotionally overburdened person stuck in a world that mostly sucks.
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80The creation of teen-girl culture seems almost pitch-perfect. The flaw is the flaw of most works of muckraking when they are held to artistic standards: It's a question of proportion.
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75Brace yourself for Thirteen -- it'll cause a commotion.
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75Sometimes the film feels as if it's trying too hard to include every possible horror a teenager could sample.
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75Wood is superb at delineating Tracy's slide into desperate incoherence, but equally impressive is Reed, who has to conceal her writer's intelligence in playing a character who's entirely instinctive and unreflective.
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75Would it be rude to suggest that your time might be better spent with your own children?
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75A movie that is often as awkward and as filled with mixed impulses as the age it documents.
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An engaging, sympathetic portrait of junior high girls who have grown up too fast and way too little. Without being preachy, it's also a cogent, terrifying tale of the lack of supervision many teens face and the utter inability of many parents to not only raise kids but also to direct their own lives.
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70The film is not without its share of awkward moments, but as an insightful critique of "Girl Culture" and the mounting war over the hearts and minds of adolescent girls that's currently being waged in the media, it's mandatory viewing.
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70Isn't in league with the Nicholas Ray classic ("Rebel Without a Cause"), but in its ferocious energy and lead performances it's many cuts above most big-screen soap operas.
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70Thirteen has a way of smashing through your defenses. Hardwicke has goosed up the old melodramatic formula with a neorealist syntax and up-to-the-minute cultural nuances and violence.
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70They often seem more bent on titillating or harrowing us than on helping us understand the characters.
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60Deliberately unvarnished shock piece designed to give pause to anyone with a daughter approaching teenhood.
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60Walks a fine line between bold indie film, with the attendant in-your-face roughness, and sodden Lifetime Original Movie.
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50The movie doesn't complete itself, in the sense of filling in our knowledge of its people (who are more like passengers). It simply comes to a stop.
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50If you boil Thirteen down to its flimsy bones, you'll find that it's not really so much about peer pressure in contemporary teen life as it is a story about a classic bad egg. That right there dilutes its highfalutin aspirations.
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50Thirteen doesn't really offer much more insight into exasperated mother-daughter relationships or twisted teens than, say, "Freaky Friday," which I much prefer. At least that film was funny and didn't try to fob itself off as a bulletin from the front lines.
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50More than once, while watching the film, I thought: The camera should really just turn away from those grating teen brats and follow the mom (Holly Hunter).
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50Though thirteen too often mistakes hard realism for overheated spectacle, the heightened drama brings out the best in Wood and Hunter, who turn their climactic scene into an actors' workshop, charged with raw emotion. As the film barrels toward the outrageously histrionic, they nearly pull it back from the brink.
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50Ms. Wood's performance bounces with mood swings from anxiety to exhilaration in a movie with moments so realistically painted that your eyes will sting from the fumes.
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40This isn't a new spin on Bret Easton Ellis, it's more like a 90-minute "Saved By The Bell" episode with better music.
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40Catherine Hardwicke's directorial debut is less a damozel-in-distress fetish flick than a bird-flipping plunge into coded girl-cult communication.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 48 out of 59
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Mixed: 3 out of 59
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Negative: 8 out of 59
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9This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.