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Friday, April 17, 2009
‘17 again’ isn’t big enough to be good
I didn’t expect to like 17 Again, and indeed I didn’t, but I was surprised at how much it almost won me over.
When I saw the ads for this movie, I thought, “Criminy - wasn’t this genre done to death 20 years ago when movies such as Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa and the similarly titled 18 Again crowded theaters?”
Yes, it was, but I guess it’s time for a new generation to get its rash of body-changing movies. The new generation could do a lot worse than 17 Again - but it could do a lot better too.
17 Again is sort of the inverse of Big and Back to the Future. This time the idea is that a 30-something man named Mike (Matthew Perry), who has wrecked his life since his high school years, gets a chance to relive his glory days as the hot 17-year-old he once was (Zac Efron). One day, courtesy of a mysterious mystical man (isn’t that always the way?), he finds himself looking exactly like he did when he was 17 , but still retaining the memories and experiences of his adult years.
When he gets to his old high school, he finds that his son Alex (Sterling Knight) is the class doormat who is regularly terrorized by the basketball team. Worse yet, his daughter Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg) is dating one of the snotty jocks on the team. Mike sets about trying to make things better for them, and to improve his relationship with his wife (Leslie Mann), who is divorcing him.
When 17 Again works, it’s because of the leads. Say what you will about High School Musical star Efron, who spends the opening scenes of the movie with his shirt off (the filmmakers know what the target audience wants to see), but the kid can actually act.
He takes moments that could have been ham-handed, like him trying to fight off his amorous daughter, and makes them work. He also has good chemistry with the ever-watchable Mann, who’s touching as the woman who thinks there’s something funny about this teen who looks exactly her husband once did.
As effective as Efron and Mann are, the movie as a whole doesn’t live up to them, for two reasons. First, writer Jason Filardi and director Burr Steers (Igby Goes Down [!]) unwisely keep returning to the unfunny romance between Mike’s best adult friend (Thomas Lennon) and the high school principal (Melora Hardin), bringing the movie to a screeching halt.
Secondly, even with its occasional charm, 17 Again mostly recycles material used by better movies. Maybe it’s unrealistic to expect this movie to be as good as Back to the Future or Big, but it would be nice if it were even as funny as either version of Freaky Friday. Just as a 17-year-old is almost an adult but not quite, 17 Again is almost a good movie, but not quite.
GRADE: C+
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