In the last few years, there have been several films featuring a common theme. It goes something like this. An adult is unhappy about their life and longs to be young again when times were good, usually when they were in high school. I guess many out there loved their high school years. I for one have enjoyed my adulthood much more than high school and would never want to go back. In any event, the next thing you know, this person wakes up and they are teenagers again and by the end of the film, realize that their lives as adults were not so bad after all. It seems that many of these films involve women, with 13 Going on 30 being the film that comes to mind first. I have found many of these films to be rather lame, perhaps because I don’t look back on my high school years all that fondly. Well, we have another entry into this genre, 17 Again, this time with a male as the lead character, with, regrettably, the same old lame plot.

Film

17 Again stars Matthew Perry as Mike O’Donnell, who is married with a daughter and son in high school. He is in the process of getting a divorce from his high school sweetheart after 18 years of marriage. His job as a salesman at a pharmaceutical company is not going so well either as he is passed over for a promotion in favor of a young woman who has only been with the company for two months while he has been there for 16. Frustrated, he returns to the halls of his high school, where he was the star basketball player, with a college scholarship on the line, the night he learns that his girlfriend, Scarlet (Leslie Mann) is pregnant. He decides to marry her and never pursues college, a fact that makes him bitter after 18 years of a listless and uneventful life and marriage.

While at the high school waiting to pick up his kids for a visitation, he encounters a mysterious old janitor (Brian Murray), who knows who he is and asks if he would change his life if he had it to do all over again. He says yes and is eventually turned back into the 17 year old Mike O’Donnell, played by Zac Ephron. Mike thinks that he has been made 17 again so that he can obtain that college basketball scholarship and enlists the help of his friend Ned (Thomas Lennon) to play his father so he can enroll at his old high school. When he does, he meets his two kids and sees them through a very different set of eyes, discovering that they are very different than he thought they were and that he didn’t know who they really are. He then sets out to help them be the persons he never got to be, all the while, hoping to be reunited with his wife, before their divorce is final and she is out of his life for good.

While there are a few humorous moments in the film, most of which involve Ned and his pursuit of the high school principal, they are few and far between. The film is totally predictable and formulaic and a rehash of other similar films. If you are looking for a really lightweight comedy and want to see Zac Ephron star in a film featuring him being a high school basketball star, yet again, check out 17 Again. However, do so on the basis of a rental only.

Video

All in all, this is a fairly solid encode, with no glaring weakness although without any one area where it really excels. The film features a nice fairly neutral color palette that is well saturated and which features some nice and bright primary colors. For the most part, the skin tones are very natural looking although there are several scenes where the flesh tones take on either a red or golden hue. Black levels are fairly deep and solid. Detail and overall clarity are solid as well although far from being reference. While facial details and background details are visible, the film simply lacks the stunning level of detail and clarity that is the hallmark of the very best looking films, making it only to the level of good but not great. .The word that comes to mind when I think of the encode is solid. While overall, this is a solid encode, it is far from spectacular. However, I am sure that fans of the film will be happy with the look of the film on Blu-ray.

Audio

I will admit that the audio on this release was better than I had expected it to be for what amounts to a teen comedy. The overall fidelity of the sound was good, sounding full, smooth and rich. The dialogue track was well recorded and placed front and center in the mix. What surprised me most about the audio is the rather aggressive use of the surrounds during the entire film. While they kicked in most aggressively during the basketball and party sequences, they were also used quite well throughout the film to provide a good sense of room acoustics and ambiance. On the down side, I didn’t find the sound to have much in the way of dynamics, although the overall bass response was quite good. I also found that the overall transparency and imaging to be just average, failing to generate much in the way of sound field depth. However, all in all, for a teen comedy, the audio was more than acceptable and fully worth a 4 star rating.

Special Features

There are plenty of extras included with this release for fans of the film. This is a 2 disc set with the first disc the Blu-ray copy of the film and the second a DVD edition which also contains a digital copy, compatible with Macs and PCs.

The extras include two featurettes in HD, consisting of “Going Back to 17″ where cast members recall their teen years and high school experiences and “Zac Goes Back” where Zac Ephron gives his insights into the film.

Also included are 13 deleted scenes and what is described as “Breakin’ Character Outtakes” which is essentially a gag reel. Neither of these last two extras are in HD. Also included is the brief “Zac’s Dance Flashback” which is presented in HD and shows shows Zac Ephron practicing some 80′s dance moves for a scene which was eventually cut from the film.

The final extra is the “Way Cool Tell All Trivia Track”, an interactive feature that reveals all the “super-secret” gossip on the set with little known facts about the cast as well as the 1980′s. The release is BD-Live enabled which will allow you to access, via the web, two commentaries, one by Zac Ephron and Thomas Lennon and one by the director, Burr Stevens. It also will enable you to access “Zac Attacks”, a brief tidbit involving Zac Ephron and Tom Lennon in a battle scenes with medieval science fiction weapons and “Tom and Melora Hardin-Unfiltered” showing both in comedic improvisation during the making of the film.

Frankly, the extras here, are pretty standard fare. If you really, really love this film or maybe Zac Ephron in particular, check them out. Otherwise, you may want to get on with more important things.

Final Thoughts

17 Again is yet another rather formulaic and predictable teen comedy where the lead character is turned back into a teenager, a period which he thinks was the best times of his life, only to discover otherwise. We have seen this plot before and will surely see it again, hopefully done a bit better than it was in this film. The film features solid audio and video but lot much else. Recommended as a rental only.