Switched bodies, same tired formula

17 Again
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Zac Efron appears shirtless within the first thirty seconds of “17 Again,” which tells you all you need to know about the film’s target audience.

The thirteen-year-old girls who will like this movie are going to see it because Efron is dreamy and starred in the massively popular “High School Musical” series. They probably won’t realize that “17 Again” egregiously copies the blueprints of all those body switch comedies from the ‘80s—“Vice Versa,” “Dream a Little Dream,” the similarly-titled “18 Again,” etc.

As if it wants to remind us how dated it is, the movie opens in 1989. Efron plays Mike O’Donnell, the star point guard on his high school basketball team. It’s the Big Game—the college recruiters are in the stands—but Mike leaves right in the middle of everything in order to be with his pregnant teenage sweetheart. His prospects of being a basketball star are shot, but, hey, at least he’s in love.

Flash forward to present day: Mike (now played by Matthew Perry) and his sweetheart Scarlett (Leslie Mann) have separated. He’s stuck in a dead-end job he hates, he can’t connect with his teenage kids and he’s living with his childhood friend Ned (Thomas Lennon), who designed successful computer software and has spent his millions on memorabilia from “The Lord of the Rings.”

Returning to his old high school, Mike runs into a magical janitor (Brian Doyle-Murray) who grants his wish of being, you guessed it, seventeen again. The next morning, Matthew Perry rolls out of bed as Zac Efron (I’d like to see the casting directors explain their reasoning there), and he seizes the chance to get his life right the second time around.

He re-enrolls in the same high school, rejoins the basketball team, goes toe to toe with his daughter’s jerky boyfriend, gets his nerdy son a date with the head cheerleader and works his way back into Scarlett’s life. She’s amazed that her son’s new friend looks remarkably like her ex-husband’s seventeen-year-old self, but he supplies a logical explanation: He’s the illegitimate son of Mike’s deadbeat brother. Uh huh.

The cast do what they can with sitcom material. Efron has a genuine, easy-going charm; no doubt he could take on roles that would leave this one in the dust. Mann, who is married to Judd Apatow, is just lovely; it’s a shame she has nothing to do here. And Lennon provides the only real laughs: The movie’s best scene has him dragging the sexy school principal out on a date and discovering they have more in common than they imagined.

“17 Again” plays out exactly as you’d expect it to, never taking a step in a direction we haven’t seen before. Its heart is in the right place, but, boy, is it formulaic. A wittier script would have acknowledged its debt to other movies: When Mike first showed up at Ned’s house in his seventeen-year-old body, Ned should have sat him down and shown him “Like Father, Like Son” or “Big,” just to let him know that body switch movies have long been irrelevant.

Directed by Burr Steers. Written by Jason Filardi. Starring Zac Efron, Leslie Mann, Thomas Lennon, Matthew Perry, Melora Hardin, Michelle Trachtenberg, Sterling Knight and Brian Doyle-Murray. PG-13; 102m.