Who wouldn’t want to be a teenager again? Zac Efron, for one.
So why is Efron, possibly the hottest young star in Hollywood today, going back to high school in the age-switch comedy “17 Again,” opening Friday? As the 21-year-old has said in recent interviews, he’s not technically 17 in the film. He’s an adult trapped in a high school boy’s body, and therefore he gets to grapple with many an “adult” emotion.
“It was that chance to switch it up,” he told newsblaze.com. “It does take place in high school and a high-school setting, but it’s not a very high-school character. And that’s what I want to do more of.”
In the film, Matthew Perry plays 37-year-old failed husband and father Mike O’Donnell, who accidentally falls into a river, emerges in Efron’s body, and is miraculously whisked back to his high school years, where he blew off basketball stardom to run away with his pregnant girlfriend.
Efron followed Perry around, studying how the actor moved and the tempo of his speech, in order to nail the man-trapped-in-a-teen’s-body idea.
It was a big change for Efron, who made his name playing Troy Bolton, the high school basketball star in three of Disney’s “High School Musical” films, and Link Larkin, the singing and dancing sensation of the musical “Hairspray.”
“The whole idea of playing a 37-year-old guy as a 17-year-old was just the most exciting prospect for me,” Efron said in Interview magazine’s April issue. “I was really intrigued by the idea. I’ve always been kind of an old man, so to speak.”
One might blame his early adulthood on fame, and his fame on the “High School Musical” films. Thanks to the three movies, two seen on TV and one that made $251 million in theaters, Efron grew up in the public eye. But he’s never been a tabloid mainstay; he’s just not that into his own celebrity, he says.
“I didn’t want to be famous,” he told USA Weekend. “I used to get so frustrated. For a while, I felt like I was completely lost in celebrity-land. I didn’t know how to handle it. Now I know that I have to plot where I’m going, when I’m going there and where the back entrance is. It’s like I’m playing a giant game of tag.”
Lately he’s been winning the game. Eager to ditch his ‘tween pin-up image, he recently hosted “Saturday Night Live,” starred in a pool party video on the Funny Or Die Web site, rolled in mud with a naked model for an Interview magazine photo shoot and graced the cover of GQ magazine.
As for his film choices, his tastes are changing, he says.
“There were several roles that I could have done where I would have played essentially another high school student, or they were romances or stories in a high school setting, and there were lots of things that people wanted to turn into musicals,” he told Interview.
He opted out of a “Footloose” remake, but is excited to begin work on “The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud,” a drama about coping with loss, he told the San Francisco Chronicle. He also has completed an art house movie, “Me and Orson Welles,” which doesn’t have a release date.
“Zac doesn’t take anything for granted,” Adam Shankman, who directed Efron in “Hairspray,” said in USA Weekend. “He never stops rehearsing, almost to an annoying degree. He’s earned his way into more complicated roles.”
For now, he’s getting generally good reviews for “17 Again.” Lisa Kennedy of The Denver Post calls the role a “turning point. He carries this comedy, smiling and delivering warmth in a way that promises he’s here to stay.”
Efron probably appreciates the praise, but he seems too humble to be affected by it. He’s said he just wants to keep growing as an actor.
“I’m definitely not the best actor in the world at this point,” he told USA Weekend. “But hopefully, with time and effort and smart decisions, that will change.”
17 Again (PG-13)
!! 1/2
Who’s in it: Zac Efron, Matthew Perry, Leslie Mann, Michelle Trachtenberg, Sterling Knight
What it’s about: Aging grouch Mike O’Donnell (Matthew Perry), who is getting divorced from his wife, Scarlett (Mann), and is reviled by his kids (Trachtenberg and Knight), magically morphs into his springy adolescent self (Zac Efron) and goes back to high school for a do-over.
Worth watching? “Efron, as a teen with the brain of a father, ably carries this featherweight movie; he’s particularly sweet when wooing the now older Scarlett.” Rafer Guzman, Newsday
