The Big Screen | 17 Again

Susan Sontag, eat your heart out. 17 Again—the newest vehicle for Disney's rising star, Zac Efron—is one of the campiest movies that I have seen since, well, Dames (see Matthew's Goodies in the 4.16.09 issue of The Miscellany News.)

In her essay "Notes on ‘Camp,'" Sontag provides criteria for defining something as campy. 17 Again exemplifies her note about reaching high yet falling painfully short.
The movie opens with a topless and sweaty Efron in the '80s shooting hoops in preparation for his big game, which will be watched by a basketball talent scout. After throwing on his game jersey, Mike dances with some cheerleaders to inaugurate the evening's event.

But then a cloud comes in to rain on Mr. Popularity's parade: pregnancy. His articulate girlfriend, dressed in white, paces at the sideline. Distracted, Mike goes over to Scarlett to investigate. She insists that everything is "copasetic," but upon further questioning, Scarlett reveals that she has a premarital bun in the oven.

Back on the court, Mike can't seem to get his head in the game. The color fades. Things go in slow motion. He decides to throw away his chance at a basketball career and college scholarship and settle down with Scar to start a family because, he insists, "We're in this together."

If there were any more references to Efron's breakout performance in High School Musical, I think the projector would have exploded.

Flash forward to the present day. Mike is now Matthew Perry. Please, Efron, stop such a transformation from happening in real life…somehow. Stay away from cocaine, or, according to Fox News, "prescription painkillers."

Mike's a schmuck. He doesn't get the big promotion at work, and he's the soon-to-be-single father of two resentful children: a rebellious daughter played by Michelle Trachtenberg (defining herself as the new Christina Ricci by never seeming to age past her teens) and a socially awkward son played by Sterling Knight, both of whom are fellow Disney alumni.

Luckily for Mike and the audience, Perry does not get much screen time as a sci-fi twist catapults Mike back to his 17-year-old self.

Mike decides to use this as his second chance to be a basketball superstar but quickly resolves that his purpose is actually to help his misguided teenage kids better their own situations. It would be nice if anyone in the audience could actually commit to these tried and true tropes of redemption and self-discovery, but the movie keeps messing around with replays and double takes.

Efron puts on his hip new sunglasses, rewind and replay; Efron walks down the hallway with confidence, rewind and replay. I understand the cleverness that the entire movie is about rewinding and replaying your life, but this a bit formally heavy-handed.

Unlike High School Musical and its sequels, 17 Again is not aware of itself and its campiness. Instead of leaving the audience satisfied and full because it was in on the joke, the audience feels judgmental and unfulfilled. Instead of titillated indulgence, the audience gets a frustrated cramp.

17 Again can only be appreciated through the lens of irony, which might be perfect for the movie's secondary demographic: college students.

But, like Professor of Film Sarah Kozloff commented on Dames, it's unclear whether the campiness of 17 Again is intentional or not.

This new Hollywood genre of transformation-inflected Bildungsroman warrants camp. Its past incarnations have touted it: Tom Hanks' Big and Jennifer Garner's 13 Going on 30 framed the method of age-based transformation as a joke.

Unlike the normal coming-of-age story, this transformative version highlights the absurd changes that age initiates. In the former, Hanks can't handle what it means a woman wants to spend the night; in the latter, Garner can't grapple with her breasts.

Although shifts age backward instead of forward, it takes the same story cues. Mike jumps back to his former self thanks to a cryptic janitor and an It's a Wonderful Life-esque jump off a bridge in the pouring rain into a wormhole. Once reinvigorated and replete with rippling musculature, Mike marvels at his ability to eat anything and everything, including a bread roll topped with Nutella, crumbled chips and spray cheese.

One of the twists that does not quite add up comes when Mike's soon-to-be-ex-wife, played by the always enjoyable Leslie Mann, does not question Mike's story upon running into her that he's Mark, her soon-to-be-ex-husband's best friend's illegitimate son. Since she rather hilariously gropes his face while commenting that Mark looks eerily similar to her former husband, would it not stand to reason that she would conclude that Mark is actually Mike's illegitimate son? I guess the movie's makers prefer to throw those non-sequiturs into some narrative wormhole.

Instead, the audience gets a twist on Back to the Future as the teenage Mike seduces the adult version of his future wife, and later, his daughter attempts to seduce him.

Mixed in with all this hodgepodge is a comment about the cyclical and universal nature of the high school experience and an almost touching story about two über-nerds who bond by speaking Elvish.

There are too many balls in the air for anyone of them to really swish and score a point. The movie blows it, big time.


—Jackson Reeves '09 is a media studies major writing a bi-weekly column on movies and their meanings. He is the Arts Editor.