17 Again

A balding studio executive sits comfortably in the office of a Warner Brothers building, sipping from a Grande Nonfat Caramel Macchiato, listening to the younger man in front of him, who is pulling his hands apart to outline an imaginary rectangular movie screen. “Two words: Big, Teen Wolf, Freaky Friday, Back to the Future, Vice Versa, It’s a Wonderful Life and Like Father Like Son. Okay, that was more than two words. But you get the idea.”

- “Who’s the lead?”

- “I’m thinking Zac Efron.”

- “Who plays the older version?”

- “Rob Lowe.”

There’s a brief pause, and then the studio executive leans forward in his chair, creating a temple with his fingers and sighing heavily. “No. I’ve got a better idea: Matthew. Fucking. Perry. Chandler, from Friends. I like him. He makes me laugh. Plus, we owe him that thing.”

- “But he doesn’t really look anything like…”

- “Shh, shh, shh. I’m greenlighting this, but goddamn it, we will have our Matthew Perry. What’s your title?”

- “The Switcheroo. Or maybe Small, since it’s the opposite of Big.”

- “First one’s too Swedish; second one’s too sexual. Call it Seventeen Again and throw in Judd Apatow’s wife. I owe him a favour for that thing he did for me that one time at that place with that thing.”

That’s about as close as I can get to the smugness of Coke Machine Glow without wanting to slit my own wrists, but I thought it had to be pointed out: this movie is really derivative, and you can almost imagine the wheels spinning behind its production, the suits sitting in a room conjuring forth the ultimate product.

It’s the perfect transition vehicle for a Disney-manufactured tween star: amiable and comfortable enough to play it safe, but provocative enough to place its star in an ideal position to become a Credible Actor. Teen pregnancy? Women falling in love with boys half their age? Incest?

Yes, the film touches on all these themes. Its incestuous leanings don’t venture far beyond the cutesy factor of Back to the Future, but it’s still there, with the daughter attempting to bed the father’s younger self.

Leslie Mann may just be falling for a younger version of her own husband, but he’s still seventeen, and she still refers to herself as a cougar.

The teens may all be harmless and unrealistic (the Evil Jock, whom Weeds’ Hunter Parrish is given the thankless job of portraying, is curiously non-intimidating), but they’re still getting pregnant, and there are still condom jokes.

It’s sort of interesting to see these topics pop up in a film that otherwise contains all the whimsy and gee-shucks-innocence and naivete of a Disney movie. I suppose you could argue that the film’s predictability in recycling themes from other films is, in fact, unpredictable. I didn’t expect them to get recycled in this movie.

But I’m rambling, and by now you are probably thinking, Talk about over-analyzing. So here are the things worth knowing about 17 Again: it is reasonably distracting. Efron is likable and charismatic and will make a fine crossover into “respectable” Hollywood endeavours (of interesting note: the movie’s opening sequence contains a throwaway musical dance number, which seems oddly out of place, as if the producers were trying to get all that High School Musical shit out of the way as early as possible — sort of like how you know every John Travolta movie’s gotta have that one throwback dance sequence, and you’ve just got to grin and endure it).

The movie’s ending is sloppy, its courtroom sequence as much a cop-out as Big Daddy‘s was (don’t ask me how I made the comparison, but I did), and its conclusion forced and open: what happens to the daughter when she realizes the boy she tried to seduce was her father? What happens when the school principal realizes the man she’s dating doesn’t really have a son and does some investigating? What happens to the son, whose own sports (and romance) ambitions are left dangling? And, most importantly, what happens to that school bully? Because he really just sort of disappears after beating the hero up and never gets his comeuppance.

The movie’s more interested in racing across the finish line (and hinging upon all its predecessors’  structures) — which doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. It just means its ambitions are misplaced and its possibilities underestimated. It’s a good film, and better than I expected it to be. But it’s not as good as it could have been.

Rating:

Tagged as: 17 again, movie review, zac efron