13 Going on 30 | Times Square — Thirty, Flirty and Under All That Light

When a thirteen-year-old in 1987 wishes to be thirty, this is the picture in her head: not a mortgage, not a commute, but Manhattan at full volume with her walking through the middle of it. The film gives her Times Square, and it does so without irony. Jenna moves through Broadway between 42nd and 47th like someone who has finally been let into the party she read about in magazines.

The production spent seventeen days shooting exteriors in New York in 2003, and this is the most expensive-looking of them because it cost nothing — the square supplies its own budget in wattage.

Worth knowing before you stand here: the Times Square Jenna runs through is not the one you will visit. Cars still ran down Broadway through the square then. The pedestrian plazas, the red steps' current surroundings, the café chairs where the traffic used to be — all of that came later, from 2009 onward. The billboards have turned over completely. The light has not.

Come at dusk, when the sky is still blue enough to compete. Look up rather than ahead. That upward tilt of the chin is the whole fantasy of the film in one gesture, and it is free.