Thirteen - I must have led a sheltered childhood (thankfully)

'Thirteen' is the story of two (you guessed it) thirteen year old girls, growing up in Los Angeles. One (Tracey) is growing up `the right way,' i.e. she studies hard and is generally nice, whereas the other (Evie) is too mature for her own good, engaging in all sorts of illegal vices (I'm sure you can guess what they entail). However, she's also thought of as both `popular' and `cool.' Therefore Tracey is drawn into her world and things start to spiral out of control from there.

You can probably take a shot at what out of control thirteen year old girls get up to when they're left to their own devices, so I won't dwell on that. Instead, I'll mention some of the criticism the film got - namely that too much happens too quickly. That may be true. In real life perhaps all these tragic events wouldn't happen all at once and to only one person (think `Kidulthood'), but this is a story after all and it would probably be a lot less interesting if the worst thing that happened to Tracey was that her dog ate her homework. Secondly, people have said it exploits the underage female actresses. They may have a point on that one, but then so do the filmmakers, who clearly aren't afraid of shying away from what kids actually get up to.

'Thirteen' is pretty hard-hitting. It's one of those films that's about kids, but you certainly wouldn't want to let your children watch it.

If it teaches us one depressing lesson, it's that people who appear nice are usually not. I found this the most realistic part of the whole film. Evie is - on the surface - lovely. She's polite to adults, always has the right answer for everything and isn't afraid at lying and dropping someone else in the brown stuff to cover her own despicable actions. Unfortunately, I have met a fair few people like that in life. They're poison and they need pointing out so others don't fall for their act.

Don't expect all sweetness and hugs from these girls. It's pretty powerful stuff and you have to be in the right mood to watch a film like this.

I'm just glad I was playing on my Megadrive at thirteen and not on the streets of L.A.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one