THIRTEEN & ADRIAN MOLE

Thirteen is a dramatic film. It talks about the adolescence period, but on the worst way. Tracy is a nice thirteen-year-old girl. She’s very clever and her marks are the best of her class. One day she meets Evie, the most popular girl on her school. Tracy, who was an innocent girl, becomes a problematic teenager. She drinks, she gets drugs and she does everything that Evie wants to do. Her mother is really worried for this terrible transformation of her daughter and she doesn’t know how to stop it.
But, the story of Adrian Mole is quite different. Adrian is a forty-year-old boy and he’s confused for all the things that are happening around him. His bigger worries are his ugly spots and his parents divorce. Adrian also has problems at school when a boy hits him everyday to get his money, and when his best friend goes out with Pandora, the girl who Adrian is in love. Finally, he gets the girl and the relation with his parents improves.
The biggest difference between both are drugs and alcohol, because in “Thirteen” the girls consumed this usually, and Adrian just drunk once.
The relation with parents is different but bad in both ways: Adrian’s parents want to divorce and everything affects a lot him. Tracy parents’ are divorced a long time ago, and now her mother is going out with a drug addict man who lives with them, and her parent only wants to be the best on his job. He doesn’t care a lot abut his family.
When Adrian meets Pandora his worry only is to be the perfect boyfriend with her. But when Tracy meets Evie, everything around her becomes problematic. Things like drugs, alcohol, anorexia…which were unknown for her start to begin her habits.
Other things, like beauty problems are similar: Tracy is obsessed about her body and her look, she only wants to be a perfect girl. Adrian is obsessed too, but with his face. His problems are his big spots. Tracy and Adrian finally realize that beauty is not the most important thing on their life.
I think "Thirteen” is more shocking than “The diary of Adrian Mole” because the first talks about how easy is to be influence by others and the problems that it can cause to you, but from a dramatic point of view. It’s real, but it’s also a little exaggerated because when you’re only thirteen it’s difficult to experience all of this so early. So, Adrian Mole’s diary is a more common story and a lot of people can feel that they’re living the same things than his character. Adrian is the typical teenager: he has spots, he is really insecure, he has problems with his family, he falls in love but he is not loved in return…things like this are always on teenager’s lifes.