Today, my 10 year-old and I watched 17 Again, the amusing movie where an enchanted Zach Efron is given the chance to revisit high school with his adult sensibilities. Zach saves his marriage and assists his pubescent kids.
The real beauty of the movie is the crucial life lesson it teaches: if you knock up your girlfriend in high school, (as Zach did) your life is destroyed (as Zach’s was).
Zach spent his entire adulthood yearning for a life where he didn’t throw it all away on a quickie. Zach gave up a college scholarship and education to marry his pregnant girlfriend only to find his adult self passed over for a promotion and without a job while the midst of a divorce.
Aside from the distracting Harry Potter timing error, the movie is amusing. In Zach Efron’s original 1989 high school experience, his nerdy best friend is a Harry Potter fan and a hippogriff joke ensues. Oops, the first Harry Potter novel was published in the UK in 1997 and not available in the US until 1998. Moreover, we first meet Buckbeak the hippogriff in the Prizoner of Azkaban, published in 2001.
Ned’s landspeeder bed, however, almost makes up for the error.
Nerd alert aside, the movie makes plain what I have been saying to my son in various forms for the last 10 years: don’t have sex until you’re married…or at least use a condom. But the later part of lesson that will have to wait until he’s a bit older.
