Happy Birthday Suitless: Jennifer Garner

Jennifer Garner is plucky and cute.  I totally wrote her off when she started that Le Femme Nikita TV knockoff Alias, which managed to grow a healthy fan-base.  I thought there was a lot of Try in her SNL hosting gig back in 2003 rendering her pretty dismissible.  Then, I watched 13 Going on 30 on DVD and fell IN LOVE with her contagious spirit.  She was like a slightly more approachable Reese Witherspoon (perhaps it was the brunette hair).  I was enamored.  It was pretty much a knockoff of Big, but, as is rarely the case with remakes, was just as good.  She failed to reinvent herself into a bigscreen action heroine with her Elektra, but she pressed every last one of my sympathy buttons as the barren mother-wannabe in Juno.

She's one of the few actresses to play up the pure and innocent card all the way through.  While her image has certainly been sexed up quite frequently, I don't recall her ever appearing nude in one of her movies.  She kind of strikes me as a Sandra Bullock-type, though her lack of commercial appeal failed to elevate her to the level of America's Sweetheart.  Lainey has dubbed her Taupe, as she's inoffensive, but boring.  If she's deserving of attention, she needs to bring more to the table.  I get that.  But, I still have a soft spot for the girl, as she can believably play women who see life through rose-colored glasses.  No small feat in today's world, no?  And, with all the crap in the media, isn't it somewhat refreshing, at times?  Safe, yes, but I believe there's a place for Garner.  It wouldn't surprise me if she pulled one out of nowhere years down the road and Blind Sided us.

Currently, she keeps plugging away.  The failure of mid-budget Catch and Release to catch audience numbers reduced her to leading girlfriend status ever since.  In her personal life, she has created a family of three kids with Ben Affleck, who hasn't cast her in any of his films yet.  I'm looking forward to her Hillary Clinton-esque Butter-carving role this Fall.  Today, she enters her 40s.

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