Movies about middle-school kids aren’t necessarily made for middle-school kids. The characters in 13: The Musical reflect this; one of the movie’s plot points involves its barely-teenage leads conspiring to sneak into a gory horror movie called The Bloodmaster. Even if it seems unlikely that today’s 13-year-olds would bother with a theatrical engagement when there are infinite horrors to behold on the internet, it’s telling that no one suggests staying home to watch a wholesome Netflix musical based on the wacky travails of puberty. Any teenager worth their acne cream would clock 13: The Musical as more appropriate for Tweens: The Audience.
On Broadway, where Robert Horn, Dan Elish and Jason Robert Brown’s musical originated, this was part of the show’s charm. In an environment where the relatively small number of productions are split between Disney, classic revivals and the occasional Hamilton-like phenom, 13 was a refreshingly small-scale operation—something that seemed made for young musical-theater fans who might not necessarily see themselves in The Phantom of the Opera. It was a little corny, sure, but so are most “adult” musicals that charge $200 a ticket.
13 was not a hit in its day, but seemed destined to live on as a school-production staple, and now has claimed its true Broadway lineage by being turned into a movie that doesn’t really work. Theoretically, the story of Evan (Eli Golden), a New York kid whose parents’ divorce transplants him to small-town Indiana just months before his planned bar mitzvah bash, should be a comfortable fit on smaller screens. But efforts to make it pop as a movie—cranked-up digital coloring, wall-to-wall theater-kid performances, low-budget music-video slickness—give the movie an unfortunate youth-pastor (or, if you will, cool-rabbi) energy. Director Tamra Davis, whose enviable resume includes tons of great music videos, Billy Madison and episodes of countless TV shows including You’re the Worst, goes into anonymous-professional mode, and only a handful of even faintly memorable musical numbers result.
One is the Grease-ish “I’ve Been Waiting,” a song newly written for the film version; the best is the marching-band/cheer-practice extravaganza “Opportunity.” Neither of these particularly involves Evan. “Waiting” chronicles the summertime text flirtation between popular Brett (JD McCrary) and beloved good girl Kendra (Lindsey Blackwell), while “Opportunity” hands the mic to Kenda’s supposed best friend Lucy (Frankie McNellis) to detail her intention to steal Brett away. Evan, meanwhile, just wants all of these kids to come to his bar mitzvah, even if it means forsaking sweetly nerdy Patrice (Gabriella Uhl), the first friend he makes in Indiana. He takes it upon himself to help Brett score a chaste first kiss with Kendra, and manipulates others to make it happen.