New on DVD: 17 Again

For some people, graduating from high school marks a beginning--a gateway to a wider world filled with opportunities, challenges, responsibilities and joys.

For others, it marks the summit of their lives--and it's all downhill from there.

Take, for example, Mike O'Donnell, who in 1989 is a hunky, adolescent basketball star. Mike is high school royalty, a swoosh-haired, six-pack-ab'ed fellow who looks a good deal like Zac Efron and is beloved by nearly everyone.

But alas, Mike's noble life gets, um, thrown for a loop when his girlfriend, Scarlett, announces she's pregnant--right before the big game, at that. Though a university talent scout is set to offer Mike a full-ride scholarship should he play well, Mike tosses the ball, runs to his paramour and proposes marriage.

"You and me, we're in this together," he tells her.

Fast-forward 17 years, and a decidedly grown-up Mike O'Donnell isn't so sure he made the right decision. He no longer looks much like Zac Efron. More like Chandler from Friends--only older, pudgier and mopier. His wife has filed for divorce. His kids barely tolerate him. He's been working for a pharmaceutical company for 16 years, but after getting passed over for promotion (again), Mike flips out, crushes his boss's cell phone earpiece against the wall and summarily gets fired.

'Tis a precipitous fall from high school aristocracy.

And so it happens that melancholy Mike finds himself haunting the halls of his old high school once again, looking wistfully at his 1989 basketball team photo. Naturally, he wonders what might've been.

"Of course I want to live in the past!" he tells a passing white-haired janitor. "It was better then!"

Little does he know that the janitor does more than just push mops. A few hours later, the custodian winds Mike's chronological clock backward and transforms him into--behold!--Zac Efron again, granting him a second stab at the last 20 years.

If we could go back in time, what would we change? That's the central question in 17 Again--a lightweight exercise in sentimental metaphysics that meanders in some problematic directions in search of the right answer.

Before we go any further, let me say this: 17 Again is not particularly great, neither as a piece of art nor as a vehicle for moral instruction. Zac Efron is likable as Mike, but he's not particularly believable as a teenager going through a midlife crisis. High School Musical, this is not. But in some ways, perhaps that's not such a bad thing.

We live in a culture that worships at the altar of youth. We buy anti-wrinkle creams, antioxidants, hair-growth gels, hair-removal products ... all in a quest to look and feel younger. The late teens have become a nearly mythical moment in our lives. And let's face it: Most of us--in some way and at some time--wish we could be 17 again.

Along comes Mike, a guy who's given that very chance. He returns to high school with everything a guy could ever want. He's got killer looks, awesome athletic skills, a fancy car and a fat bank account.

And yet he walks into his high school not as a child, but as an adult. He's learned the value of sexual responsibility (a lesson many of his teenage contemporaries and some of his school's employees definitely have not). He understands the importance of wisdom and experience. And, as he looks at the world through his suddenly younger eyes, he realizes that all he wants--all he needs--is the adult life he chose and made for himself.

The HSM series talks a lot about friendship and love. But never sex. It talks about living for the moment more than planning for the future. And, for what it's all about, that's fine.

But 17 Again takes a different tack. It doesn't minimize high school's transformative place in our lives, but it adds a sobering--and in this day and age, pretty unusual--postscript: It's good to grow up.