17 Again is a 2009 comedy drama that re-spins and old tale where old meets young again with a star-in-the-making lead cranking up the charm.
THE STORY: Disgruntled and unhappy Mike O’Donnell (Matthew Perry) has a good life but just doesn’t realize it, convinced it all went to hell back in high school when he made a rather significant choice in giving up his basketball dreams for a girl he got pregnant. Now married but separated from her (Leslie Mann), and having two kids, whom barely give him the time of day, he can’t help but wonder how his life would have been different if only he’d stayed in the game. After a chance encounter with a magical janitor, he finds himself seventeen-years-old again, and gets a chance to make right what he thinks he’s done wrong. Time for some real life lessons.
Director: Burr Steers
Writer: Jason Filardi
Stars: Zac Efron, Matthew Perry, Leslie Mann
THE RUNDOWN: Woefully overused, this ‘switching bodies’ comedy feels a few decades too late, though there’s no steering clear of Zac Efron‘s performance as the young Mike, his considerable energy and charms just about the only thing saving a film with … let’s face it … a number of real problems. While the message at the core of the story is well-written, a loopy subplot involving Mike’s best friend Ned (Thomas Lennon) just about derails the whole affair, with him an aggressive nerd-to-tech genius in love with the school principal (Melora Hardin). A frustrating experience with some genuine high peaks 17 Again often sinks far too low.
The core message of the film is worth watching, with great work from Efron and Mann.
The movie has plenty of good things for it but wastes its time on absurd comedy and subplots that upends a lot of the better work.
THAT MOMENT: After 37-year-old Mike is passed over for a promotion he is certain he deserves – a young attractive woman beats him out – he quits his job, already bummed out over the direction his life has taken. His two kids, 17-year-old Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg) and 16-year-old Alex (Sterling Knight) hardly notice him and his wife has filed for divorce, she thinking he blames her for his perceived failures.
Revisiting his old school, where his own children now attend, he has an unusual encounter with the janitor (Brian Doyle Murray) who notices Mike longingly looking at a photograph of his younger self in a display case. With a little twinkle in his eye, the janitor deals some hidden magic and it’s not long after when Mike arrives home to discover he’s been transformed back into his former self, that of a seventeen-year-old basketball phenom and high school hunk.
Needing to figure out what to do with this unique twist, he manages to convince his still best friend Ned – who in school was a dweeb everyone picked on but now is a mega-millionaire software genius – that he’s really a younger version of himself. They believe this is some sort of spell and that Mike is meant to take this chance to correct the path he was on, earn the basketball scholarship and achieve greatness. Guess how far off he is?
With Ned’s help, who pretends to be Mike’s father, he gets enrolled at his old school, which happens to be the same school Mike’s children attend, and being the same age now as his daughter, ends up in some of the same classes. I gotta stop it right here though and comment on a pretty cool thing director Burr Steers does with Mike’s re-entry into school, where he tweaks the trope of the ‘hot new guy’ who stops everyone in their tracks. Mike certainly looks the part and the film feels like it’s ready to go that route with the music and the slo-mo already geared up, but then BAM, not so much as Mike gets a taste of reality it all but ignored. Great stuff.
Anyway, once in school, he finds that his kids – now that he is sharing the same halls as them – are not who he thought they were. Alex is not the popular jock he assumed and Maggie is dating Stan, an absolute tool of a butthead (Hunter Parrish) … he’s kind of a caricature of 80s bully classics I guess, so … hooray for cliché. As such, Mike begins to realize why he might be young again, and takes to giving Alex and Maggie more attention, becoming friends with Alex and trying to be a positive influence on Maggie, including publicly standing up to Stan, who pretty much treats everyone like dirt.
This leads to a moment in a biology class – one Mike and Maggie share – where the teacher is openly discussing the truth about high school sex and preaching of the merits of responsibility. This prompts Mike to chime in about the benefits of waiting, nervously hoping others will adopt his opinion, and while the teacher agrees, enforces the school policy of preparedness, passing around a basket full of condoms, much to the delight of Stan, who is sitting next to Maggie.
Mike is in shock, thinking only that Maggie will be giving herself to this creep of boyfriend, who takes handfuls of the condoms of course, ignoring the ‘take one and pass it’ rule. To counter this, Mike declines taking a condom and vocally announces that he doesn’t need one because there’s no one right now he’s in love with, which has him standing up and delivering a heartfelt speech about love and marriage … and then children, the father in him steering his every word.
WHY IT MATTERS: Mike has been struggling with the reality of what life is like for his kids, and while he’s got Alex on a good path, teaching him how to play ball and be a better man, it’s more difficult reaching Maggie, who is clearly influenced by peer pressure and poor choices.
In this biology class, Mike becomes overwhelmed at the prospect of Maggie spiraling out of control and he unable to do anything about it, taking this chance to try and make a connection, but also realizing how important she really is to him as her father. He talks about how special it is to hold your baby girl for the first time, not believing that anything could be so small and delicate and understanding that you now couldn’t love anything more in the whole world. All you want to do is protect it with everything inside you. This is good work from Efron.
Meanwhile, Maggie looks on, sensing there is something different about this new guy in class, whose speech changes the attitude of nearly all the girls in class, each returning their condoms to the basket in dedication to waiting. Mike’s words have great effect on Maggie, who seems to connect with what he’s saying, obviously wondering if these are words her father – at least the one she thinks is older and not standing right in front of her – has thought about with her. I love this look from her:
It’s a brief, touching moment … that ends in a fist fight, because duh. High school movie. Whatever. The importance of the moment is not lost on the violence. This is the moment when Maggie begins to rethink her own path but also when Mike truly commits to his belief about why he’s been given this second chance in the first place. We as the audience fall into this message as well, as the film shifts into the second act, finished with the whole ‘return to high school antics’ and on to the mission at hand, where Mike becomes all the more consumed with becoming a better person.
READ MORE: Another Return to the Good Old Days Comedy in Mr. Destiny
I haven’t even mentioned the great stuff happening with Mike’s wife, played with earnest by the always fun to watch Mann. And I won’t mention it further as this arc is actually played out well with some funny and often sentimental angles that work. It’s just too bad the movie works so hard to be goofy with a dreadful second story forcing the hopelessly stereotyped Ned going to wildly absurd lengths to try and get a date with Mike’s principal, who, [bg_collapse view=”link-inline” color=”#d92323″ expand_text=”show spoiler” collapse_text=”close” ]unsurprisingly reveals herself to be a typical nerd as well.[/bg_collapse] It’s just plain ridiculous and unravels entirely much of what the good spirit of the main story puts together, mostly because this could have been a nice bit of positivity but instead is a bland, empty sideshow with nothing of substance.
Either way, 17 Again is a generic body switching-esque movie made better by some good performances and a few solid, well-earned emotional lifts. A chance speech in a biology class on the impact of a baby girl on her father is the best reason to watch. It’s a great movie moment.