Directed by Burr Steers
Rated PG-13
(Two Stars)

Seventeen-year-old Mike O’Donnell (played by High School Musical’s heartthrob, Zac Efron) has a choice to make. Before the big basketball game, with college recruiters watching from the bleachers, he finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant.

Mike does the standup thing, marries his girl and let’s his college dreams slip away. Just to prove that no good deed goes unpunished he is transformed, in the very next scene, into a middle-aged Matthew Perry.

Now, Matthew Perry is an excellent comic actor, but in terms of optics it’s kind of like a Ken Doll morphing into the Pillsbury Doughboy. On that count alone Mike has reason to grumble.

But Mike has other complaints. Years have passed and he’s come to doubt his decision. He hates his job, his kids can’t stand him and his wife, Scarlett (Leslie Mann), is fed up with his whining about what could have been.

Mike is a good man but wisdom is not his strong suite. In short order, he makes three cinematically convenient blunders: he quits his job, gets thrown out of the house and utters aloud that he wishes he were 17 again and could make different choices. It takes only a passing acquaintance with “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Big” to know what happens next.

Poof.

Mike transmogrifies back into Zac Efron (that’s got to feel good) and the movie starts to have a little fun. Efron doesn’t have the comedic talent of Matthew Perry, but he’s a comfortable actor and carries the film with an easy grace. Better yet, he teams up with Thomas Lennon as Ned, his uber-nerd best friend, and Lennon is funny.

Mike and Ned conspire to get Mike enrolled in his old high school so he can rewrite history. But there are complications. Both his kids are there and he gets a perspective on their life that he’s never had before.

Mike has to decide if it’s his own life that needs his help or his children’s.

Screenwriter Jason Filardi stitches “17 Again” together in a patchwork of teen-film standards. He leads us through familiar terrain—the big game, a blowout party at some poor parents house, the endless obsessions with social acceptance—trying to mine nuggets of humor.

Sometimes it works. Mike finds that the old adage, "if I only knew then what I know now," doesn’t always work so well when you plug a father’s awareness into a teenage conversation. The young, hot Mike responds to the advances of three pretty girls with a lecture on self-respect.

The girls aren’t buying it. “Don’t respect me!” “No, don’t respect me!” “You don’t even have to remember my name!” Mike wanders away muttering, “This is some other dad’s problem.”

But mainly Filardi finds a low-amp sweetness in his characters. Leslie Mann brings a likeability to Scarlett that compliments Efron’s Tiger Beat Magazine wholesomeness. Mann manages to create a quirky cross-generational chemistry with this strange teenager who reminds her of her husband.

“17 Again” spends most of its time as a Disney-esque wish fulfillment about high school and family. When the film does manage to evoke a laugh it’s usually because Thomas Lennon has stumbled back onto the screen.

Ned’s hapless attempt to pretend he’s Mike’s father brings him in contact with the high school principal, Jane Masterson (Melora Hardin), and he promptly falls in love. Harden, who’s best known as Steve Carell’s train wreck of a girlfriend in “The Office,” has great comic chops and the two of them provide a loopy subplot (they bond over speaking elven languages from “The Lord of the Rings).

“17 Again” takes aim at the same demographic that made the High School Musical franchise such a big hit. Providing a vehicle for Zac Efron to reconnect with his fans is what this film does best.