17 AGAIN

You might have seen it before - you know, a movie about the adult going back to relive high school?



There's Freaky Friday, where the mom and daughter change bodies. We've seen both the original with Jodie Foster/Barbara Harris, as well as the remake with Jamie Lee Curtis/Lindsey Lohan.




And you may or may not (probably not) remember Vice Versa, with Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage as a father/son that trade bodies.


Then there's Like Father Like Son, where Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron play the father and son body-trading team.




And my all time favorite movie is Peggy Sue Got Married, where Kathleen Turner faints and wakes up to find herself back in high school.

Actually, I think that Peggy Sue is the one that most resembles "17 Again", because nobody trades bodies here. There's only the adult who's made a mess of his/her life and wishes they could go back to do things differently. At least they think they would do things differently!


You might think that since this plot has been done before, that 17 Again might not be worth your time. But if you are a big fan of the time travel genre, as I am, you will love 17 again!

Matthew Perry plays Mike O'Donnell, a husband and father who gave up college and a basketball scholarship to marry his pregnant high school girlfriend, Scarlett. Years later, she's kicked him out because she is tired of hearing him complain about the life he "could have had" if he hadn't have had to marry her. In one scene, as he looks at his high school basketball photo, a "mysterious stranger" asks him if he wishes he could be 17 again, and Mike says, yeah, he does. Later, he sees this mysterious stranger on a bridge getting ready to jump. Mike goes after him to save him. Later, when he gets home and is changing clothes, he looks in the mirror and discovers that he is...17 again. His best friend (who he's been staying with since Scarlet kicked him out) poses as his "father" and they get Mike back in high school, where he gets a second chance at the basketball scholarship. At first he thinks that this has happened to him so that he can get back the life he lost, but soon he realizes, as he gets to know his kids from a different perspective, that the purpose of his experience might be different than he first thought.

I know Zac Efron is a big star because I see his face plastered everywhere. But I have boys, and so my household has just not gotten into "High School Musical. I gotta say, I am impressed with his acting! I was convinced I was actually seeing Matthew Perry in Efron's body because he did such a great job mimicking Perry's facial expressions and mannerisms!

Of course, its predictable, as this genre of movie often is. But those of us who like this genre think that's ok, as long as the characters are believable and we connect emotionally with the movie. Great movie!

THE BRAVE ONE

Jodie Foster's movie, "The Brave One", came out on DVD this week. The tagline is: How many wrongs to make it right? My DH, who always enjoys seeing the bad guy get what he deserves, ran right out to buy it! The storyline goes like this: Foster's character, Erica, is a talk show host who is about to be married. Her fiancee is played by Naveen Andrews, of Lost fame. One night as they stroll through the park, they are brutally attacked, and her fiancee is killed. Erica is left alone to recover from the horrific experience she survived. Surprising herself, she proceeds to hand out "justice" as she sees it unfold on the streets. But she doesn't start out with that agenda; her fear causes her to react, and then, well, it just becomes habit. Terence Howard plays the cop who's investigating these "serial" crimes, and in the course of the story, they become friends.

Throughout the movie, it's obvious she wants to get caught. And you get the feeling that the cop (Howard), is a good cop, and that even though he cares about her, he cares more about doing the right thing. You know that eventually, he'll have to make a difficult choice - once he finds out Erica's little secret.

The funny thing is that this movie made me think of another movie I had just seen - "Mad Money". Which sounds insane, but in that movie, Diane Keaton says, "The truth is we’re all capable of anything. We don’t realize it. But it’s true". In "The Brave One", Foster's character says, "Inside us is a stranger". These statements are true. Each one of us is capable of anything, given the right situation. We don't know how we'd react in situations like these - a brutal random attack, or in the case of "Mad Money", if we're in a situation where we're desperate for money. Do these situations change us, or do they bring out what is already inside? I guess that's what Foster's character contemplates when she says that we have a stranger inside of us.

The movie was very suspenseful - along the lines of "Panic Room" & "Flight Plan". I was a bit disturbed by one particular scene - when the couple was being worked on in the ER after they had been attacked, the scenes kept flashing back to a love scene. This went on for the duration of the ER scene: gentle touching...then bloody bodies...flash back to clothes being removed lovingly...then clothes being cut off in the ER. I'm sure they were trying to show the contrast of love and gentleness, against violence and brutality, but it was kind of creepy.

On one hand, it's a well made film. The acting is great, the characters believable. On the other hand, its quite bloody and violent. And I think the ending was unfortunate, as it made it seem like all the wrongs were somehow "OK". I walked away from "The Brave One" feeling like the good guys got suckered into being the bad guys.