What has happened to Matthew Perry's career? That's, I'm assuming, the question on a lot of people's minds. The Friends alum had a total screen time of approximately 10 minutes or so, before relinquishing the spotlight to High School Musical refugee, Zac Efron. The Disney baby wisely jumped the East High ship before it completely submerged and has graduated to playing Mike O'Donnell, who apparently is supposed to resemble Matthew Perry as a teenager. No offense to Perry, but I seriously doubt that he looked anything like the swaggering, blue-eyed dynamo that is Zac Efron. Granted, the film still has a distinctly Disney stink to it, but none the less, I suppose it's not a bad film for Efron to further his movie career with.
The makers of 17 Again certainly know their audience as Efron was shirtless within the first 30 seconds of the movie shooting hoops and, of course, drenched in sweat. By doing this, he's not exactly taking a giant step away from playing Troy Bolton (his HSM alter-ego) who lived his life with a basketball in his hand, but none the less, the sharp shooter is supposedly Mike O'Donnell when he was in high school. After discovering his girlfriend, Scarlett, was pregnant, he throws away his chances of going to college on a basketball scholarship and in a romantic leap, offers to marry Scarlett and take care of their child. Mike O'Donnell twenty years later, though, is an under-appreciated salesman who is living with his best friend Ned (a humorous Thomas Lennon) because he's divorcing his wife and mother of his two kids, Maggie and Alex (Michelle Trachtenberg and Sterling Knight). Apparently Mike's life is so unbearable that he, in a very cliché ridden exchange with a janitor during a walk through his old high school, laments that he wish he'd had it to "do all over again." In a markedly It's a Wonderful Life moment, Mike attempts to stop a man who looks as though he's about to commit suicide (surprise, it's the janitor from school!) and in turn, falls into a swirling vortex of terror that, when people fall into it, they turn into Zac Efron. Naturally, the first thing Mike does when he's his 17 year old self is throw on an Ed Hardy t-shirt and head straight back to high school. When he does, he discovers some not so savory things about his kids, as in, his daughter is dating the school bully and his son is the victim of some harassment involving being duct taped to a toilet. In the process of trying to turn his kids back in the right direction, Mike inadvertently makes his daughter fall in love with him (yuck) and skyrockets his son up the popularity food chain by helping him make the basketball team. He makes some incredibly inappropriate but misguided advances on adult Scarlett (Leslie Mann, who I can't imagine any guy wanting to divorce) but she wisely shoots him down on the basis that he is only a teenager. During his adventures as his teenage self, Mike discovers that he's been a lousy father and a bad husband. He also realizes exactly why he threw away his hoop dreams for Scarlett. (I won't give away the ending, but I promise, you can see it coming a mile away).
There have been a whole lot of body-switching comedies in the history of cinema, and this one was no different in terms of the comedic style. Most of the laughs come from the awkwardness of a dad trying to act like a teenager, which has officially been dubbed (by me) lazy humor. Efron does what he can with the script (that was clearly written in three weeks considering how much the beginning and end were rushed) and he succeeds in nearly putting me and half of America into a good-looks induced coma. Leslie Mann is charming as usual, Thomas Lennon gets some laughs by playing the token nerdy guy, and Mike's children, Trachtenberg and Knight, have pleasant enough screen presences. Thanks to the skinny jeaned aficionado, Zac Efron, 17 Again is going to make a lot of money. Put a handsome enough guy into a lead role and people will basically see anything. 17 Again doesn't try to be what it's not (and I respect that) but then again, it also isn't much. It's littered with half-baked clichés and the storyline itself doesn't have nearly enough momentum to make it through a whole movie without crashing and burning. Basically, this movie will do an excellent job in feeding the masses of teenage girls (including myself) who will inevitably flock to this movie just to get a glimpse of their beloved shining star.
My grade: C+
