17 Again

When it comes down to it, I suppose that it's pretty much gonna be impossible for me NOT to give a fresh review to a movie with a script that uses the word "copacetic," unless the film is downright awful. To be fair, though, the usage of that term is only one of the several good things that 17 Again has going for it. It's more pleasant/charming than it is laugh-out-loud funny, but more importantly, it's a movie that can actually be enjoyed by people outside of the subset of Efron-obsessed teenage girls.

That's not to say that the filmmakers aren't well aware of the fact that their lead actor is the movie's biggest selling point. In fact, it's completely obvious that they purposely rush through the scenes involving 37-year-old Mike (played by Matthew Perry) in order to let Zac Efron dominate the screen time. While this will certainly please the film's main target audience, it does come across as problematic during the first few scenes of the film, where we start out with young Mike's decision in 1989 to abandon his basketball game and marry his pregnant girlfriend, and we move immediately to 2009 where an adult Mike has already been thrown out of the house by his now wife of 20 years. Obviously, the normal thing in terms of logical plot development would've been to show a few scenes of Matthew Perry and Leslie Mann playing the married couple, and then move on to the fight that leads to Mike being thrown out of the house and to his sudden transformation back into his younger self. But nope, the makers of 17 Again want to bring Zac Efron back to the screen as quickly as possible, and that's exactly what they do. The teenage girls will be happy, but to me, it was a very jarring plot transition. Similarly, at the very end of the film, once Mike goes back to being his old self, the movie comes to an abrupt end, since it's obvious that we won't be seeing the heartthrob again after that.

Luckily, despite these missteps at the beginning and end of the film, what we get in between is pretty good. 17 Again focuses on Mike's efforts, as a 37-year-old trapped in the body he had 20 years ago, to not only mend his apparently ruined relationship with wife Scarlett (Leslie Mann), but also to discover how unaware he was of the great difficulties that both his son Alex (Sterling Knight) and his daughter Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg) are experiencing as they traverse the toilsome high school experience. In terms of the movie's development of Mike's relationship with each of these three people, two of them are developed very well, and one of them is handled somewhat poorly. His efforts to help his son Alex avoid being bullied, get into the basketball team and work up the courage to talk to a girl make for some of the best material in the film, as Mike sort of doubles as Alex's father and his buddy at the same time, and the two roles never feel like they get jumbled or unnecessarily intertwined. However, the movie deserves even more credit for handling the scenes between young Mike and adult Scarlett as innocently as possible: it's inevitable to get a feeling of "inappropriateness" while watching Zac Efron flirting with Leslie Mann (Scarlett just thinks Mike is this friend of Alex's who "looks just like my husband"), and it's an even tougher thing to traverse for a comedy that isn't R-rated and is aimed more at the under 18 crowd. So, it's impressive that they handle these scenes as carefully as they do, and any feeling of discomfort that people may have felt during the scenes will surely be assuaged by the scene towards the end that takes place in a court room: it's an undoubtedly sweet/heart-breaking moment that also gives Efron the opportunity to show that he can do more than just give charming smiles for the camera (he displays emotion far more effectively than I would've expected). Unfortunately, Mike's attempts to mend things with daughter Maggie aren't handled nearly as well by the filmmakers; in fact, curiously, Mike and Maggie don't sit down to have an actual conversation until right around the film's one-hour mark. I suppose it's hard to jam so much into such a limited amount of time, but it was a tad disappointing that this happened, especially because Michelle Trachtenberg is a very good young actress, and so, it would've been interesting if it had been explored beyond just having Mike get into a fight with Maggie's jerk of a boyfriend.

Oh, and there's a subplot involving a romance between Mike's friend Ned (Thomas Lennon) and the school principal (Melora Hardin) which initially seems like a completely disposable time filler, but eventually takes a very nice twist in which the two of them discover that they are huge Lord of the Rings dorks, and this makes it feel like it was a worthy subplot to insert (the line that leads to the discovery involves the character of Gandalf, and it is simply brilliant and among the funniest moments in the film).

Zac Efron's charm does go a longer way than I expected it to, but that alone wouldn't have been enough to make the film recommendable. Thankfully, the movie itself has such a big heart that it's basically one of those that's impossible not to like. The teenage comedy genre produces tons of mediocre movies every year, so let's be thankful that we get something like this every once in a while.

6/10