17 Again
Zack Efron delivers…God's word?
Scott Klocksin
Issue date: 5/1/09 Section: Arts
17 Again is the kind of movie you want to like. Zac Efron took much of the boy-next-door thing he had going on in the High School Musical trilogy, and applied it to his first non-singing lead role, as Mike, a talented high school basketball player, who reappears decades later as a 30-something-year-old in an adolescent's body.
In 1989, Mike had a shot at a full ride to college, so long as he was on his game the night college scouts came to watch him play. He wasn't. His girlfriend, Scarlet (Allison Miller) picked that same evening to drop a bit of life-changing news on Mike, and he ended up not going to college on account of it.
Fast-forward twenty years, and the new Mike (Matthew Perry) is finding the rungs up the corporate ladder ill-suited to his slippery, nearly-middle-aged grip, has two kids who don't really like him, and is going through a divorce with the love of his life and mother of his children, the elder Scarlet (Leslie Mann).
It's a story you can get kind of into, so long as you're in touch with your sense of whimsy and are mentally limber enough that you still remember how to suspend your disbelief for 102 minutes. There are, of course, the almost-obligatory insertions of the technological and cultural devices that constitute much of the difference between suburban life in 1989 and suburban life in 2009. There are some pretty decent jokes, and some of them manage to play off of the generational gap which Mike somehow seamlessly spans. But as soon as the outlines emerge of a plot in which the whole point is for Mike to go back to the adult life he had-only this time to make it work, using the sheer power of boundless love-it's worse than disappointing. It's unsettling.
But the most unsettling thing about this movie isn't the been-there-done-that premise of youth revisited in the service of some much-needed life lesson (eh-hem! Big, Thirteen Going on Thirty, etc.), or even the inescapable presence of Zac Efron's chirpy little face. It's that millions of people will see this movie, and its closet-conservative take-home message will go straight over most of their otherwise-level heads. Its cleverly distracting insertion of the occasional irreverent joke or close-up on booty-dancing cheerleaders are all part of what puts it in an emerging category of "slick" comedies dealing with teen sex (2007's Juno is another great example). Their "slickness" lies in the fact that there's plenty of reason to want to like them, but they end up selling you a bill of goods that, if you're not careful, makes you cop to a premise you otherwise wouldn't (unless you're pro-life, against premarital sex, don't think high school kids should have access to condoms, or think that the essential problem when young women flirt with boys they like is that they don't "respect themselves").
17 Again also lays on the paternalism about as thick as the guy at the deli down the street from me lays on the mayonnaise as he hastily throws together a sandwich (and roughly as artfully, too). During the parts of the movie where Mike is supposed to be 17, he's put in situation after situation where he has to "protect the virtue" of the teenage daughter he conceived before growing up and then entering a time warp back to teen-hood. Gag me. No, worse: shove a Bible in my face, and call it something hipper.
If it sounds like I'm reading too much into this cute, time-travel love story, consider that Christiannews.net gave it 4 out of 5 stars in its "moral rating" category. A reviewer for Planetwisdom.com, a website whose slogan is "Life From a Biblical View," had this to say in an overwhelmingly positive review: "Of course, God forgives. And '17 Again' makes the point that even if you've made an unwise choice in high school, your detoured life is still meaningful. It's not 'over.' God can use even our sinful choices to make spectacular use of our lives for His glory."
Well, non-existent deities may forgive. But in a world where ignorance is as rampant as preventable STD's and unwanted or impractical pregnancies, I just can't.
In 1989, Mike had a shot at a full ride to college, so long as he was on his game the night college scouts came to watch him play. He wasn't. His girlfriend, Scarlet (Allison Miller) picked that same evening to drop a bit of life-changing news on Mike, and he ended up not going to college on account of it.
Fast-forward twenty years, and the new Mike (Matthew Perry) is finding the rungs up the corporate ladder ill-suited to his slippery, nearly-middle-aged grip, has two kids who don't really like him, and is going through a divorce with the love of his life and mother of his children, the elder Scarlet (Leslie Mann).
It's a story you can get kind of into, so long as you're in touch with your sense of whimsy and are mentally limber enough that you still remember how to suspend your disbelief for 102 minutes. There are, of course, the almost-obligatory insertions of the technological and cultural devices that constitute much of the difference between suburban life in 1989 and suburban life in 2009. There are some pretty decent jokes, and some of them manage to play off of the generational gap which Mike somehow seamlessly spans. But as soon as the outlines emerge of a plot in which the whole point is for Mike to go back to the adult life he had-only this time to make it work, using the sheer power of boundless love-it's worse than disappointing. It's unsettling.
But the most unsettling thing about this movie isn't the been-there-done-that premise of youth revisited in the service of some much-needed life lesson (eh-hem! Big, Thirteen Going on Thirty, etc.), or even the inescapable presence of Zac Efron's chirpy little face. It's that millions of people will see this movie, and its closet-conservative take-home message will go straight over most of their otherwise-level heads. Its cleverly distracting insertion of the occasional irreverent joke or close-up on booty-dancing cheerleaders are all part of what puts it in an emerging category of "slick" comedies dealing with teen sex (2007's Juno is another great example). Their "slickness" lies in the fact that there's plenty of reason to want to like them, but they end up selling you a bill of goods that, if you're not careful, makes you cop to a premise you otherwise wouldn't (unless you're pro-life, against premarital sex, don't think high school kids should have access to condoms, or think that the essential problem when young women flirt with boys they like is that they don't "respect themselves").
17 Again also lays on the paternalism about as thick as the guy at the deli down the street from me lays on the mayonnaise as he hastily throws together a sandwich (and roughly as artfully, too). During the parts of the movie where Mike is supposed to be 17, he's put in situation after situation where he has to "protect the virtue" of the teenage daughter he conceived before growing up and then entering a time warp back to teen-hood. Gag me. No, worse: shove a Bible in my face, and call it something hipper.
If it sounds like I'm reading too much into this cute, time-travel love story, consider that Christiannews.net gave it 4 out of 5 stars in its "moral rating" category. A reviewer for Planetwisdom.com, a website whose slogan is "Life From a Biblical View," had this to say in an overwhelmingly positive review: "Of course, God forgives. And '17 Again' makes the point that even if you've made an unwise choice in high school, your detoured life is still meaningful. It's not 'over.' God can use even our sinful choices to make spectacular use of our lives for His glory."
Well, non-existent deities may forgive. But in a world where ignorance is as rampant as preventable STD's and unwanted or impractical pregnancies, I just can't.
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