- I still love Zac Efron and I don’t care who knows it. I think I start every review for one of his movies like this because I feel like I need to be upfront about my love and adoration for Zefron. I continually have to reassure myself that he is over eighteen and that it’s not creepy for me to love him as much as I do. He’s just very endearing and likable and has good comic timing and what’s not to love? 90% of the movie’s funniness comes directly as a result of his performance. I don’t know if that says a lot about him or very little about the movie.
- There was much good usage of the word “douche” and its variants, culminating in the scene where Leslie Mann’s date has arrived with a bouquet of flowers and jealous Zefron says “Carnations? What a douchebag!” Hilarious.
- Zefron is weirdly adept with a lightsabre and I kind of found myself wishing he was Anakin Skywalker.
- Scarlett, the estranged wife of old!Zefron, has a bit of a Mary Kay Letourneau problem. A normal woman in her mid-thirties who had her son’s teenage friend making emotional and occasionally sexual advances toward her would, in her right mind, make sure to make it clear that his behaviour is inappropriate and then make sure to avoid being alone with him. Scarlett seems to play lip-service to various societal norms regarding relationships between adults and teenagers half their age by constantly telling Mark (young!Zefron’s new alias) that his behaviour is improper and then she follows this up engaging in a variety of activities that result in non-platonic touching. Hi, mixed messages much? Come on, lady, protect yourself legally and stay away from this kid. Don’t teach him to dance or hold his hand or anything else.
That it turns out he’s secretly your estranged husband doesn’t make it okay. This has always been my problem with Beauty and the Beast as well, now that I think about it. In both stories we’re supposed to infer that the women are falling in love with the men inside the boy or upright-walking buffalo, because this is supposed to be teaching us a lesson about how appearances can be deceiving and that we need to look more deeply at people, etc. Except at the end of the day, these women are still falling in love with teenage boys or animals with spectacular command of the English (French?) language because at the point they fall in love, they don’t know that the object of their affection is secretly their estranged husband or an actual prince. This is not okay! How is this okay? What kind of messages are these that we’re giving people? It skeeves the hell out of me.
- Actually, if you were to redo this movie as a drama, it would definitely be another drama about bored suburbanites and the kind of thing that causes adult women to engage with teenage boys. Cougars: The Movie. Thank god this is a comedy because I think that movie would have been infinitely worse than this one.
- Speaking of being skeeved out, Mike/Mark’s daughter suddenly turning around and wanting to jump her dad’s bones was also NOT OKAY. I don’t feel like incest is something you can really turn into the stuff of comedic genius.
- Jan Levinson… Gold?
- Any of Zefron’s various monologues were quite amusing, especially when he was standing up to his son’s bully and when he was speaking the virtues of abstinence. Hilarious. Also, spinning a basketball on one finger is made of awesome.
- It was totally unnecessary for him to dance with the cheerleaders at the start of the movie. We know you can dance! Everyone who saw this movie has seen High School Musical; you’ve got nothing to prove.
- This needs to be the last movie like this that Zefron does if he wants to graduate from Teen Idol to Serious Actor. Leonardo DiCaprio needs script approval on all future Zefron choices.
- In my family we have an undying love for Cruel Intentions, which is terrible while simultaneously being hilarious and entirely too quotable. This movie is like that, where it’s 1.5/5 star movie but the enjoyment factor is about a 4 star rating. To be honest, I enjoyed it so much that the next day I willingly watched the bad cam version my sister had downloaded a couple of weeks ago. Shut up.
17 Again
Zefron reigns supreme, unsurprisingly. This kid’s a winner.
IMDB Plot Synopsis About a guy whose life didn't quite turn out how he wanted it to and wishes he could go back to high school and change it. He wakes up one day and is seventeen again and gets the chance to rewrite his life.