Jennifer Garner’s ‘Family Switch’ Proves She’s Still the Queen of Teen Girls Trapped in Adult Bodies

Jennifer Garner absolutely knew what she was doing when she took the starring role in Family Switch, a new Netflix comedy about a family who swaps bodies with each other, which began streaming today. Some actors are scream queens. Some actors are action stars. Jennifer Garner? Well, she’s the queen of playing teenager girls who are trapped inside the body of an adult woman. Everyone has their strengths!

It’s a niche skillset, to be sure, but a useful one. Millennials will forever adore Garner for defining our childhoods with her hilarious performance in 13 Going on 30, the 2004 comedy about a 13-year-old gold who is magically transported to her future as a 30-year-old woman overnight. To use an overused word: It’s iconic. Garner perfectly captured the wide-eyed innocence, naiveté, and joy of Jenna Rink, a child who had not yet been corrupted with adult onset cynicism. Only she could charm a room full of too-cool-for-school adults into breaking into Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” dance.

Now, in this new family comedy produced by Garner, directed by McG, and written by Adam Sztykiel and Victoria Strouse—based on the 2010 children’s book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal—Garner plays a middle-aged mom, Jess, who swaps bodies with her teenage daughter, CC (played by Wednesday star Emma Myers). CC is hardly a carbon copy of Jenna Rink. While Jenna was awkward, girly, and desperate to fit in, CC is a confident, popular jock. She’s a 16-year-old soccer superstar, who, apparently, has a shot at making the U.S. women’s national soccer team. (Sure! Those ladies definitely recruit random high school juniors who have only ever played for their school team!)

Garner’s performance is less astonished pre-teen wonder; it’s more dismissive teenage judgment. When Jess critiques the outfit CC has chosen to dress her body in, she rolls her eyes. “You’ve got to bow down to the patriarchy, don’t you, Mom? Just dress for the male gaze!”

Much like Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis in the 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, Jess and CC need to learn how hard it really is to be a teen girl and mother, respectively. Garner and Ed Helms (who plays the dad of the family, who swaps bodies with his teenage son), fail spectacularly at cooking. Garner can’t hold in her old-lady body farts during a work presentation. (She didn’t take her mom seriously when she said her body couldn’t handle dairy.) At one point, the script even offers a winking reference for the audience, when Helms exclaims, “I’m 13 going on 30!” (That same scene also references other body-swap movies, including Big, Freak Friday, and 17 Again.)

Family Switch is hardly the revelation that 13 Going on 30 was, but it’s still fun for fans of Garner to watch her take another crack at this highly specific acting challenge, nearly 20 years later. If you stick around for the mid-credits blooper reel, you’ll realize it’s no walk in the park for Garner, who is 51, to embody the spirit of youth these days. She struggled to burp on command for one of the jokes, quipping in the outtakes, “I’m a 50-year-old refined person!”

Be that as it may, Garner’s still got it. No one plays teenage girls trapped inside the bodies of adult women like she does!