Review: 17 Again (2009)

[Scott Mendelson]

17 Again
2009
102 minutes
Rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

There is a constant conflict within 17 Again, the pull over whether to
be a real movie with real issues at its core vs. the need to appeal to
the basest instincts in the stereotypical fans of teen-star Zac Efron.
While the film sets up a genuinely compelling narrative, it quickly
ignores that which made its story interesting in favor of assembly-
line plot developments and overly broad character work. There's an
awfully good movie lurking about three or four drafts down the line
from where the screenwriter Jason Filardi apparently stopped. But, be
it because of the WGA strike or a general lack of nerve, the film
never really tells the story that it wants to tell.

A token amount of plot: Mike O'Donnell (Matthew Perry) forever regrets
the fateful choice he made as a high school senior, to run off the
basketball court in a key game in order to declare that he would marry
his pregnant girlfriend. Having forsaken college and dreams of
basketball stardom, he's currently stuck in a dead-end corporate job,
with two teenage children who loathe him and a wife who has just
thrown him out of the house, a consequence of eighteen-years of self-
pity. However, at his lowest point, a burst of magic turns Mike into
his seventeen-year old self (Zac Efron), giving Mike the chance to
redo high school all over again. But is that really why he was
transformed?

While the film is capably acted by all involved (as Mike's wife,
Leslie Mann is given more to do than in her own husband's Funny
People), the script feels like a first draft. Explicit plot and
character exposition is doled out in overt expository monologues and
very little is left unexplained during the somewhat rushed first act.
Furthermore, the film never really deals with what Mike really wants.
He doesn't want to relive high school, he wants to go back to high
school in 1989 and make different choices. But since a mainstream
family comedy can't really have a hero (played mostly by a teen idol
no less) who wishes he didn't have his kids, the film tries to have it
both ways. He gets to relive high school as himself, but in the
present so his wife and kids are still alive and well. It's a strange
paradox that turns the film into a variation on Quantum Leap, with
Mike trying to figure out what he has to do to make things right.
Playing the part of Al/Ziggy is Mike's high school chum, nerd-turned-
billionaire nerd Ned Gold (Thomas Lennon), who has a superfluous
romantic subplot with the school principal. Ironically, a first-act
toy light-saber fight between 'young' Mike and older Ned is better
choreographed and edited than most action-film sword fights.

Alas, the second and third acts are pretty much on autopilot, as he
must be the husband and father to his family that he never was as an
adult, while still maintaining his seventeen-year old visage. On the
plus side, Mrs. Scarlett O'Connell almost immediately realizes that
something is up (she quickly notices the fact that this new kid looks
EXACTLY like Mike from high school), which allows the movie to
plausibly dabble in a quasi-romantic narrative between young Mr.
O'Connell and a grown-up Scarlett. The film is relatively inoffensive
and Zac Efron proves yet again that he is a true honest-to-goodness
movie star (he also rocked in Hairspray), but the picture never really
tries to break out of its cookie-cutter formula. Call it a mediocre,
watchable missed opportunity.

Grade: C+