Film

What would have happened if in 1989, basketball jock Mike O’Donnell (Efron) had played in that Big Game, gone to college and decided with his girlfriend to get a rhymes-with-shmashmortion? That’s an interesting idea, but it’s not the premise of this film, which makes Mike 17 again but keeps him in the present day. It’s 2009, and by some cruel trick of biophysics, 1989’s Efron has grown into Perry. After losing a promotion and failing to talk his former sweetheart (now Mann) out of a divorce, Mike meets a magic janitor who gives him a second chance to…be Zac Efron.

Re-enrolled in high school, the youthful Mike acts as bully repellant for his kids. What follows amounts to a photonegative of Back to the Future (this time, the daughter crushes on young Dad) pitched at the wit level of an ’80s father-son mind-transfer comedy. (Lennon’s Elvish-speaking tech guru is the one inspired element.) To be fair, Steers (Igby Goes Down) doesn’t shy away from the ick factor of a 17-year-old dancing with his now-much-older wife, and Efron does a credible job of aping Perry’s mannerisms. Between this and Richard Linklater’s unreleased Me and Orson Welles, there’s evidence he might make a decent leading man if only he’d apply himself.