Great like all zac efron from 2000s and it is one of them just amazing

Surprisingly enjoyable tale of the standard "If I could do it all over again" motif. A lot of the story here seems to be ripped from _Mr. Destiny_ where the high school jock thinks his life would be so much better if he could go back to that key moment in high school and choose a different path. _17 Again_ does it a little different in that Mike(Matthew Perry/Zac Efron) figures out pretty quickly that he's not back in high school for his own reasons, but to help his kids. The story does of course have it's everyone is happy ending and the youngest actor playing our high schoolers is 20 I think but apart from that, this movie is just pretty darn fun. Efron turns in a solid performance and seems ready to leave the high school scene behind.

I had to watch 17 Again because Matthew Perry is in it, the unforgettable Chandler from Friends. Honestly, that was my main reason for approaching the film. After that, it does exactly what you would expect from a comedy about an adult becoming a teenager again: regrets, a second chance, high school, family problems and the inevitable lesson about appreciating the life you already have. Mike O’Donnell was a promising basketball player when he was seventeen, but he gave up that future to start a family. Twenty years later, his marriage is falling apart, his children can barely stand him and he is convinced that he made all the wrong decisions. Somehow, he becomes seventeen again and uses the opportunity to return to high school, get closer to his children and discover that perhaps his real problem was not the life he chose, but the years he spent blaming everyone else for it. The premise is so familiar that the film practically writes itself. We have seen similar stories many times: adults turned into children, teenagers trapped in older bodies, identity swaps and characters forced to observe their own lives from the outside. There are no major surprises here, nor any especially original way of using the idea. Very early on, you know what will happen, what the main character will learn and how almost everything will end. That does not mean the film is unbearable. It has a few amusing moments, a light tone and enough pleasant scenes to make the running time pass without too much difficulty. Zac Efron has charisma and handles the physical comedy and high-school scenes well, although it is difficult to believe that there is really an adult man inside him, carrying a marriage, two children and twenty years of frustration. He works better as a charming teenager than as an adult trapped in a young body. Matthew Perry appears less than I would have liked. His adult version of Mike has that tired sarcasm and way of reacting that inevitably recalls Chandler, although the role does not give him much room to shine. It is a shame, because Perry had enormous comic ability, and it would have been interesting for the film to use him more instead of mainly relying on him to begin the story and return for a few moments. Thomas Lennon, as Ned, probably gets the funniest material. His character is a collection of eccentricities, geek fantasies and exaggerated behavior, but at least he brings a more unpredictable energy. His relationship with the school principal creates some of the most absurd and memorable scenes in a film that otherwise follows extremely safe paths. The family material is where the film tries to find some emotion. Mike discovers that his children have problems he had failed to notice and that his wife is not simply the person destroying their marriage. The film wants to talk about nostalgia, the frustration of getting older and the very human tendency to imagine that our lives would have been perfect if we had made one different decision. These are interesting ideas, but they are handled in a fairly superficial and predictable way. There are also some uncomfortable situations caused by an adult man looking like a teenager and interacting with his own family under that new appearance. The film tries to turn them into jokes and avoid any overly strange interpretation, but it does not always succeed. Some scenes become far more awkward when you think about them for more than a few seconds. Burr Steers directs competently without bringing any special personality to the film. Everything looks like a late-2000s teen comedy: energetic music, a high school full of stereotypes, romance, basketball, dancing and an attractive cast. It is not especially badly made, but there is not a single image, decision or sequence that distinguishes it from dozens of similar films. 17 Again has a few laughs and is easy enough to watch. Zac Efron does a decent job, Thomas Lennon brings some life to the story and Matthew Perry is always pleasant to see, even though his role is smaller than one might expect. But the story is far too familiar, offers no surprises and disappears from memory almost as soon as it ends. It is not a terrible film. It is simply one of those comedies that can fill an afternoon without demanding anything, but that does not particularly justify the time spent on it either. You can watch it, but you really do not need to.

Cliché after cliché. Another boring "again" story.

It's okay. Has some fun moments. Nice to have seen once.