The Thirteenth Year

“The Thirteenth Year,” released in 1999, takes a very interesting idea – boy beings turning into a mermaid on his thirteenth birthday and tries to hide it from everyone. Every review I have seen said this is a metaphor for coming out as gay – and this is made boring.

The script doesn’t have a clear structure. Subplots get added and thrown away quickly. You feel as though the writer only decided on a main for the film while working on it and never got around to finishing the idea.

Dan Stalcup said in his review, “The movies is led by a charisma vacuum named Chez Starbuck playing a teenager named Cody — the ultimate 1999 name. If Starbuck’s performance was remotely as exciting as his name, I’d probably be bumping this up a rating. Alas, he has no idea what do in front of a camera and was probably cast because he could swim.”

The film’s main pro is that it builds the coming-out-of-the-closet metaphor as the film goes on. Stalcup described, “He has a confrontation with his girlfriend (Courtnee Draper) that is an astonishingly frank mirror to a teen girl realizing she’s a beard.” The movie’s climax is Cody reviving his secret best friend Jess, played by Justin Jon Ross, with a shock of love, like how Eve kissed Wall-E, to bring back his memories.

However, it doesn’t generate the smallest dramatic tension because of the bad pacing of exposition disclosure and inconsistent characters – like the adoptive parents, played by Lisa Stahl Sullivan and Joey Gladstone from “Full House,” impressionist Dave Coulier, whose personalities are different in every scene.

Stalcup described, “It’s still a Disney Channel movie with a light fantasy element, some time capsule fashion choices, and some corny zingers.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel anything when I was watching this movie. I felt as though no feeling was put into this whatsoever. If they did, then I probably would have been rooting for Cody the whole time, but the fact that it was combining Cody trying to find out who he is, and Jess’s dad (Brent Briscoe) trying to convince to everyone that the mermaid (Stephanie Chantel Durelli) he saw so many years ago is real, didn’t give this film a focus. If they had just focused on one central element, then maybe I would have felt different, but as it is, I can’t say I’m glad or not about seeing it. If you want to see it, be my guest, as you can see it on Disney+, but I think you can safely sail away from the deep waters this film sank in.

Alright, enough DCOMs for this month. Tomorrow I will be looking at an animated movie about birds in “Disney Month 2024.”