17 Again (2009)
17 Again (2009) — So I wanted to see this. I know I have an instinctive dislike for prefabricated homogenized Disney stars, but I’m a sucker for rip-offs of the movie Big. Maybe it’s because of an active wish to redo… well, pretty much most of my life to this point. Anyway, the only thing I had actually seen Zac Efron in before this was an episode of Saturday Night Live and that was funny so there was nothing I suppose to ward me off. Plus it was directed by Burr Steers (best known as “guy on couch with Flock of Seagulls haircut who is unceremoniously shot by Samuel L. Jackson” in Pulp Fiction), who directed a movie I liked called Igby Goes Down (but he also wrote How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days so his track record is to say the least mixed). Anyway the movie is okay enough. It’s not horrible, but it’s not that great either. It made me chuckle a bunch and laugh a few times, but it wasn’t hilarious or anything. There are some major plot holes when you really think about it, but it’s the type of movie where you don’t really care because you know it’s a light diversion and hardly a important entry in the pantheon of cinema so you forgive it its flaws and just move on. In addition to Efron, it has a cast of reliable character actors like Thomas Lennon, Leslie Mann, and Nicole Sullivan. Plus Michelle Trachtenburg brings the hotness (though not as much as she has in other movies) (oh, also isn’t she like 22 by now? How long is she going to milk the “teen” thing?). So nothing in the movies goes off-the-rails wrong, but what works for the movie doesn’t do much to elevate it past a way to kill an hour and a half. There are much worse movies out there, but there are also much better.
Persistence of Vision 