Column:

'17 Again' clever play on classic premise

Efron fills the featherweight role well.

By Dan Moore

Published April 23, 2009

"17 Again" is a fine vehicle for its college-aged ex-musical star, Zac Efron, for the same reasons it doesn't really show us anything about his ability to move beyond his Disney Channel days -- it's a light, entertaining movie, but it would be just as light and just as entertaining, if a little less dreamy, with a different lead.

The plot is unabashedly familiar -- its turns and machinations have been refined and worked over for the past sixty years, at least, and they'll last another sixty just as recognizable as they are now.

"17 Again" picks the following plot points out of the buffet: Mike O'Donnell (Zac Efron, with Matthew Perry as the adult version) is a star high school basketball player in 1989, just about to receive a scholarship when his girlfriend becomes pregnant and he's forced to give up the game.

Twenty years later he's an unsuccessful pharmaceutical salesman in the midst of a divorce, convinced that he ruined his life by not going to college -- and this, of course, is where he gets the chance to become 17 again, going back to high school. Secondary plot points include the distant kids, including a Marty McFly-moment with his disenfranchised high school daughter, and the awkward high school friend who acts as surrogate father, comic relief and secondary love story.

Going back to relive your glory years -- or ahead, to see what being a kid is really about -- is an evergreen premise, and "17 Again" takes more than its "Big"-in-reverse set-up from that Tom Hanks vehicle. The tone and the style are all "Big," too, bright and fabular even when the subject matter gets depressing, shot through with an airy pace. Nobody breaks into song in this high school, and there is a pervasive sense of alienation, but this is the kind of movie high school where the goths are really just admirers of Tim Burton, and the unpopular girls all look like Michelle Trachtenberg.

This could all get unbearable if it were poorly written, but "17 Again" is a surprisingly clever movie; it makes the most of its featherweight tone and pleasant conceit, and manages to get all the obligatory gags -- Mike, the new high schooler, attempts to impress by dressing as Kevin Federline; Mike's daughter is in love with him, then thinks he's gay; Mike's friend, rich and socially inept, acts ridiculously to woo the school principal -- not only right but right in its own way.

But if the film does a fine job of being the first Zac Efron movie that won't draw undue police attention toward, say, 22-year-old, male movie critics who buy one ticket, it doesn't do much to establish Efron's purpose in that arena. He's fine in the role, able to act befuddled convincingly (a must if one is playing Matthew Perry's young doppelganger) but it's an easy role, made easier by a classic plot and a funny script. If he wants to follow the "Big" career path to becoming America's Male Sweetheart, he'll need to find a style of his own.