OK, name that movie!  A guy, unsatisfied with how his life is going, sees a nutty old man jump off a bridge, goes into the water after him, and this launches a sequence of fantastic events that helps him figure out that his life is worthwhile after all.  It's A Wonderful Life?  No, that's not right.

Try this one: The hero winds up in high school, in an era different from the one his own high school experiences were formed, where he unexpectedly finds himself in the middle of a rather creepy parent/child romance where the other party is unaware of this incestuous relationship.  And there's also a bully involved, and the hero gets knocked out and wakes up being tended to by the girl who's actually more closely related to him than she thinks.  Back to the Future?  Nope, not that either.  It's 17 Again, and in a reversal of the BTTF plotline, it's not his mom falling in love with him, but his daughter.

Actually, rather than time travel or guardian angels showing "What-If" scenarios of alternate realities, 17 Again uses the "adult becomes a kid again" premise.  This is nothing particularly new or original; all boxes of the "adult/kid transformation" matrix have been checked multiple times in pop-culture history.  Kid and adult swap places?  Freaky Friday in its multiple incarnations.  Kid flashes forward to join his/her adult life already in progress?  13 Going On 30.  Kid gains an adult body but stays in the present time?  Big.  Adult jumps back to his/her own youth to try not to make the same mistakes again?  I think there was a TV series on this premise in the early days of the Fox network, not to mention the Butterfly Effect series of movies where the protagonists got multiple chances to go back and screw things up even worse.  Adult regains a youthful body but stays in the present time?  A lot of stories with the "Fountain of Youth", at least one Twilight Zone episode, and this movie.  (Oh, and there also was a cable-TV movie Seventeen Again, with the number spelled out, starring the twins Tia and Tamera Mowry.)

So this movie doesn't have much originality of premise.  But perhaps it doesn't need it, given that it's aimed largely at an audience for whom the 1989 high school sequence at the start of the film is as much ancient history as were the 1950s high school scenes in Back to the Future to me when I saw that film in the '80s.  After all, its star, Zac Efron, is a big Disney Channel teen heartthrob (but apparently not in an exclusive deal with Disney, since this film isn't from them).  They did have Matthew Perry (from Friends) in as the adult version of the lead character, Mike O'Donnell, which might attract a little interest from an older crowd, and the PG-13 rating might cut it off from the lower end of the tweener range, but the audience will still probably skew toward those who won't be so aware that it's all been done before.

Putting aside the unoriginality of the premise, and various continuity glitches such as his girlfriend being pregnant 20 years ago but his oldest child still being in high school in the present, it's an entertaining story, with some positive (and occasionally a little too preachy) messages for young people.  Mike's geeky best friend, who poses as his father when he gets mysteriously de-aged, is amusing with his comprehensive collection of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and other fantasy/SF paraphernalia, his fluency in Elvish, and his attempts to romance the principal of the high school while enrolling his "son" there.

Mike largely acts with the traditional stupidity of TV/movie characters who need to do stupid things to further the plotline, but he predictably comes through in the end.  There are no big surprises here, but it should be fun for the audience it's intended for.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older