April 17, 2009 Those Cheekbones! That Wind-Swept Hair! OMG, It’s Zac Efron! By MANOHLA DARGIS
What is Zac Efron? Despite his ubiquity and supernova stardom in certain shrieking demographic circles, I feel confident that there are others who are curious about this weighty question of culture. For starters Zac Efron is a he, a Californian by birth and of drinking age in the state of his birth (21). He is pale, pliable and very pretty (picture-perfect for bedroom walls), with a curtain of hair that sweeps across his forehead and well-manicured dark brows as if gently stirred by the collective exhalation of a thousand virgins. I’m fairly certain I heard that exhalation — I certainly heard the shrieks — when I watched his new movie, “17 Again.”
The dewy Mr. Efron is also, of course, the most visible star of the “High School Musical” juggernaut, which has taken him from the Disney Channel to the familiar rite of passage as host of “Saturday Night Live.” The maturation of Zac Efron, the bid to have him gently (lucratively) transition out of the grip of his pubescent fan base and into the wider commercial paw without pulling a Lindsay Lohan, partly explains “17 Again.” Even the movie’s premise — an adult transformed into his adolescent self — speaks to this uneasy transitional phase, though it seems a little cruel to the fans who must prepare for the inevitable, that someone decided an exhausted-looking Matthew Perry should play their shining boy at 37.
In pop cinema terms that premise is almost as old as Jodie Foster, who starred in the first “Freaky Friday” (1976) as a girl who switches bodies with her mother. Ms. Foster’s preternatural maturity and husky voice made the part work for much the same reasons that the 2003 remake with Ms. Lohan did: you believed there were old(er) souls trapped inside those young bodies. Ms. Foster and Ms. Lohan’s unforced talent helped. A confident physical performer, Mr. Efron isn’t in their league, and it’s too early to tell if he ever will be. Although he can hit all the emotional notes in a scene, there is a level of calculation behind his performance and piercing blue eyes, a protective barrier or just self-consciousness that needs dismantling.
Meanwhile he works it — man, does he work it — strutting across the screen like a teen idol (like Zac Efron!), playing the star with an easy smile, insouciant haircut and even bared muscles: his character, Mike, is shooting hoops without a shirt in the very first shot of the movie. (Cue the shrieks.) The story, written by Jason Filardi, pivots emotionally on the moment when Mike turned his back on a potential basketball scholarship and all the good things that would have presumably come with it because he decided to dry the eyes of his weeping girlfriend, Scarlet (Allison Miller as the teenager, Leslie Mann as the adult). From the age of adult Mike and Scarlet’s oldest teenager it’s clear that, back in 1989, they were Just Saying Yes.
Given the story’s obnoxious implications — sex, meaning girls, can ruin your life — it’s no surprise that Scarlet doesn’t get the chance to revisit her past and tell her boyfriend to put on a condom. Instead the adult Mike clicks his heels or rather falls into a badly computer-generated whirlpool trying to chase a stranger with a menacing twinkle (Brian Doyle-Murray), who guides him to his journey. Suddenly, Mike is 17 again and sloshing inside his business suit. He takes refuge with his best friend, Ned (a hilarious Thomas Lennon, nearly sprinting away with the movie), a former late-20th-century high school dweeb turned early-21st-century master of the universe who lives in a Modernist house crammed with pricey boy toys and sleeps in a “Star Wars” landspeeder.
The director, Burr Steers, whose other credits include “Igby Goes Down” and stints directing TV shows, keeps people and things moving fast enough so that you don’t have time to worry about the details, like the inanity of the story. Like any savvy director charged with a high-end advertising campaign, he keeps his main product — Mr. Efron — front and center and nicely lighted. Even so, Mr. Steers also understands the value of his supporting team, particularly Mr. Lennon, whose character enters geek heaven upon sighting Mike’s principal, Ms. Masterson (Melora Hardin). Mike’s transformation might be magical, but it’s this pocket-size portrait of a sexy, thinking, adult woman who can seamlessly go from wearing high-heeled boots to pointy elf ears that’s out of this world.
“17 Again” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Girls are particularly cautioned.
17 AGAIN
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Burr Steers; written by Jason Filardi; director of photography, Tim Suhrstedt; edited by Padraic McKinley; music by Rolfe Kent; production designer, Garreth Stover; produced by Adam Shankman and Jennifer Gibgot; released by New Line Cinema/ Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes.
WITH: Zac Efron (Mike O’Donnell), Leslie Mann (Scarlet, adult), Thomas Lennon (Ned Gold), Michelle Trachtenberg (Maggie), Sterling Knight (Alex), Melora Hardin (Principal Jane Masterson), Brian Doyle-Murray (Janitor), Allison Miller (Scarlet, teenager) and Matthew Perry (Mike O’Donnell, adult).
Review: You've seen `17 Again' _ again and again By CHRISTY LEMIRE The Associated Press Monday, April 13, 2009; 9:24 PM
LOS ANGELES -- "17 Again" is one of those movies that requires you to suspend all disbelief and assume that someone who looks like Zac Efron could, in 20 years, turn into someone who looks like Matthew Perry.
(Those must have been some rough years _ either that or Rob Lowe wasn't available.)
Can't do it, you say? Well, that detail is just about as implausible as the film's premise itself: Mike O'Donnell (Perry), a miserable father of two on the brink of divorce, gets a chance to relive his high school days and improve his future by becoming 17 in the present day, all thanks to the magical powers of a mystical janitor (Brian Doyle-Murray).
It's always some odd figure on the fringe who brings about this kind of fantastic transformation, isn't it? This guy literally says to Mike: "I bet you wish you had it to do all over again."
Well yes, there are a lot of elements in "17 Again" that feel awfully familiar. Director Burr Steers, a long way from his darkly comic, coming-of-age debut "Igby Goes Down," takes you places you've been before _ many times _ in more charming movies like "Big," "13 Going on 30," "Freaky Friday," "Never Been Kissed" and even "Back to the Future." The idea of going back to high school is so overdone, there was even an entire episode of "Family Guy" that parodied it. (Jason Filardi is credited with writing "17 Again.")
But rather than changing his decision to abandon his dreams of basketball stardom and marry the girlfriend he knocked up, Mike realizes his true purpose is to reconnect with his wife, Scarlet (played as an adult by Leslie Mann), and teenage kids Maggie and Alex (Michelle Trachtenberg and Sterling Knight). The result is facile and feel-good, not engaging or insightful.
Efron maintains the dreamy presence that made the tweens scream in the "High School Musical" series _ those eyes! those cheekbones! _ which is on full display when Mike-as-adult-as-kid gets a makeover from the K-Fed get-up he initially dons in a feeble attempt at fitting in. He steps out of a Porsche, purchased by his nerdy childhood best friend Ned (Thomas Lennon of "Reno 911!") who grew up to make it big as a computer geek, and with his aviator sunglasses and devil-may-care shag haircut, he looks like ... well, he looks like Zac Efron. At least Steers knows how to capitalize on his star's strongest attributes.
Efron also enjoys a couple of amusing scenes here as a grown-up delivering uptight diatribes in a boy's body, and he connects with Mann in a way that surprisingly isn't all that creepy. But he still seems too pretty and lightweight to be a persuasive leading man capable of carrying a film. It'll happen, though. There's time.
It certainly doesn't help his cause that he's been given such a cliched depiction of high school life in which to function. The jocks (the leader of whom is conveniently dating Mike's daughter), the nerds, the awkward cafeteria moments and an out-of-control house party _ they're all there, with nothing new to give them fresh life.
It makes the singing-and-dancing hijinks of the East High Wildcats look downright subversive by comparison.
"17 Again," a Warner Bros. Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for language, some sexual material and teen partying. Running time: 98 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Zac Efron? More like Zac What-the-F-is-Wrong-with-You? Hehhehhehhe BITCH PLEAAAAZZZE
"Notorious was nice, but it’s not in the color purple range" "Angels and Demons may get nominated for cinematography the imagery was profound" "District Nine will definitely win for best foreign film it made money and everyone loved it" ~ 8movies
Posts: 2741 | Location: nz | Registered: January 12, 2009
AGE BEFORE BOOTY By LOU LUMENICK April 17, 2009 --
SET in an alternative universe in which Zac Efron can grow up to become Matthew Perry and abortion doesn't exist, "17 Again" makes the '80s comedies on which it's modeled seem positively cutting-edge by comparison.
This laugh-starved twist on "Big" and the many lesser body-swapping comedies of the era is basically a lecture on sexual abstinence. It's aimed at the tween girls who idolize the squeaky-clean Disney star, as well as their aging Gen X parents who grew up on those movies.
As if.
Back in 1989, Efron's Mike abandons his dreams of becoming a college basketball star when he learns his girlfriend, Scarlett, is pregnant.
Twenty years later -- Mike is now Perry and Scarlet has grown up to become the embittered Leslie Mann -- the couple is divorcing. He's a sad-sack pharmaceuticals salesman (cue erectile dysfunction jokes) who's alienated from their son and daughter, both now in high school.
Through the intervention of a magical janitor (Brian Doyle Murray), Mike gets reverted to his teenage self (Efron) for another shot at hoop stardom. But wouldn't you know it, Mike finds he is more interested in winning over his estranged wife and helping the kids.
Although there were appreciative yelps in the tween-packed audience when he appeared shirtless, Efron is not exactly this generation's Michael J. Fox. The closest he comes to actual acting is in a dancing scene with Mann.
There is a fairly bizarre -- horrifying, if you actually think about it -- sequence in which the newly teenage Mike gets the girls in his high school class to spurn the offer of free condoms in favor of a chastity pledge. But director Burr Steers, who directed the deeply subversive "Igby Goes Down" seven years ago, carefully stays away from anything too interesting in his first feature gig since that flop.
For a few minutes, it seems like Mike's son -- played by a sexually ambiguous newcomer named Sterling Knight -- might have the hots for the teenage Mike, whom he doesn't realize is his father. But Mike quickly hooks up the son with an "available" girl at the same time he's trying to separate his daughter (Michelle Trachtenberg) from her trashy boyfriend who wants to go All The Way.
The daughter's subsequent attempt to unwittingly seduce her father doesn't get very far, although Mike does have to defend his understandable reticence -- and his "very tight" jeans -- with the requisite "I'm not gay" speech.
Mann does what heavy lifting there is, trying to convince the audience that Efron and Perry (who, thankfully, has very little screen time) are actually the same person at different ages. Most of the laughs are generated by Thomas Lennon as Mike's billionaire, memorabilia-loving buddy, who is persuaded to pose as Mike's father when his pal re-enrolls in high school.
It's hard to say what's funnier, Lennon's frosted comb-over-and-under, or his twisted courtship of the high school principal (Melora Hardin), which reaches its high point with a conversation in Elvish.
"17 Again" is the sort of movie where you take your pleasures where you can find them.
lou.lumenick@nypost.com
17 AGAIN
Rearrested development.
Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG-13 (mild profanity and sexuality). At the E-Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Chelsea, others.
The philosopher George Santayana famously wrote that ''those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'' The philosopher Homer Simpson famously responded ''D'oh!'' The lame high school comedy 17 Again tries charmlessly to synthesize those two schools of thought, preaching a pro forma appreciation of adult responsibilities while making pro forma jokes about campus archetypes including the athlete, the bully, and the nerd. The result is a slack do-over fantasy in which Zac Efron, as a basketball star, looks baffled as to why he hasn't been asked to sing and dance.
Instead, the twinkly, pleasing, 21-year-old pop heartthrob stretches by playing a 17-year-old, twice. At first, Efron's Mike O'Donnell is a class-of-'89 hoops star who forfeits the possibility of a college sports scholarship when he chooses to marry his pregnant girlfriend. (Levi Johnston, consider yourself schooled.) Then, briefly, two decades later, the thicker body of Mike is inhabited by Matthew Perry, playing an embittered dude unable to face his unraveling marriage to that same childhood sweetheart (Knocked Up's Leslie Mann, too enchanting for any man to leave) or to face his own uncommunicative teenagers.
After being splashed with in-the-movies magic water that allows him to experience school life with a Gen-Xer's wisdom, Efron reappears as 17-year-old Mike again, but with thirtysomething gravitas. His kids are now his classmates. And his hot wife is now the mother of those classmates.
In what passes for the most interesting (if cheerfully most irritating) supporting character, Reno 911!'s Thomas Lennon camps it up as Ned, a mega-nerd who has been friends with Mike since back in the day, and who agrees to pose as ''young'' Mike's dad. Still a mega-nerd, Ned is still, not shockingly, a single guy. But now, he's also a technogeek billionaire. 17 Again might have had fun emphasizing how high school geeks inherit the earth. Instead, the filmmakers hang too desperately with the boring popular kids, underestimating the cool dorks. C–
Posts: 27254 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
