Oh to be 17 again. Some people look back fondly at high school and others are perfectly content with those four years being a part of his or her past, and nothing more. If I was Matthew Perry, I would never want to re-live high school. Sure, I don’t know anything about his high school experience, but I do know about his glory days. Perry had a decade of the good life, which he will reap the benefits from for decades to come.
Sure the six former Friends are getting older. For the men this means more gray hairs and age lines. For the women it means more hair dyes and over-night wrinkle creams. Regardless of what age brings, I’m sure those six actors would never opt to travel back to their high school days. Matthew Perry may not, but in 17 Again, he plays a man who does.
Mike O’Donnell (Matthew Perry) is about 35 years old and going through a divorce from his wife Scarlett (Leslie Mann). His two kids, Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Alex (Sterling Knight), do their best to stay out of the whole mess because they are just trying to get through high school with the least amount of worry and the highest amount of fun. Mike is sleeping on his best friend’s couch, Ned, who is the ultimate dork. After Mike has some work troubles, he ventures back to his old school to remember the old days and recollect the old shots on the basketball court.
Enter the body of Zac Efron. Of course after seeing High School Musical, what other young actor else would you cast when looking for a baby faced skinny kid who can believably put the ball in the hoop? Although there was one instance when the young Mike joins the cheerleading squad for a choreographed dance, it stopped there. It wasn’t yet another HSM, thankfully. So now Mike as a 35-year-old father is trapped in his former 17-year-old body and he decides to enroll back in high school to snatch another shot at a future in basketball.
It’s not that I don’t like Zac Efron, per se. I just wanted more of Matthew Perry. In Friends, Perry did his own flashback work when they showed him as a college freshman. He did the Flock of Seagulls hairstyle with the black and white splotched blazer with the best of ‘em. I guess those aging signs wouldn’t allow Perry to play the young Mike O’Donnell, but that said—I wish he was in the movie for more than 10 minutes. 17 Again is trying desperately to be funny, but Zac Efron just isn’t that. He’s absolutely beautiful, but the guy isn’t funny. The saving grace for the movie was in Leslie Mann and Thomas Lennon. If you’ve seen any of Leslie Mann’s roles that she played in her husband’s comedies, then you know that she’s hilarious. The dialogue wasn’t quite there for Mann to truly shine, but a little bit of that Judd-Apatow-style delivery slips into 17 Again.
Thomas Lennon is endearing and funny as Mike O’Donnell’s best friend. He plays it well with Perry and plays it even better with Efron. He outshines Efron in every scene for the funniest man on screen. His love for The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars makes for some pretty ridiculous sequences that give the movie the adultish humor that it needed to be seen as something other than High School Musical 4.
So for those of you who are Efron fans (are you old enough to even know who Chandler Bing is?) then you’ll love this movie. But if you were hoping to see Matthew Perry’s amazing charm and wit splash across the screen, don’t bother with this movie. His dialogue isn’t funny and he is on-screen for such a short period of time, his huge Friends name was wasted on a role so pathetically small. Better luck next time, Matt.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The cover of the Blu-ray boasts: “Packed With Zac! Over 30 Minutes More With Zac.” So again, I’ll reiterate that if you are a fan of the singing, dancing, girlish actor, then you absolutely need to own 17 Again on Blu-ray. The cast recollects their high school experiences, which was a cute segment and was of course focused on Efron. The movie did another high school flashback of sorts for the cast members, which was a total rip-off of Never Been Kissed. In both movies, the actors’ high school photos are attached to their names in the final credits. Thieves! Aside from that, the extras are mainly cutesy little segments with Zac Efron, a bone thrown to the teeny-boppers, obsessed with Zac. I understand their sentiment, in my day, I was obsessed with a different Zack—Zack Morris. Ahh, those were the days.
"17 Again" is on sale August 11, 2009 and is rated PG13. Children & Family, Comedy. Directed by Burr Steers. Written by Jason Filardi. Starring Leslie Mann, Matthew Perry, Michelle Trachtenberg, Sterling Knight, Thomas Lennon, Zac Efron.
