Who among us has not looked back on a time in our lives and thought if I just had that one moment to do over again, things would be different.  I would be lying if I said that I was not among such dreamers, occasionally.  For me, it would be when I decided to spike the baseball into the ground after being pulled from a game while pitching in little league.  I see that as one of those forks in the road moments.  Faith in God tells me to review my feelings on the matter.  God only gives us the present.  The only thing we can do with the past is learn from it to make the future better.  Sadly, 17 Again(2009) makes no mention of God, but it has some other lessons any Christian can appreciate.  Indeed, color me surprised by how okay I found it to be, which is an improvement over my expectation.

Mike O’Donnell (Zac Efron) does not need to be 17 Again because he is already that age, and he expects to do well in his upcoming high school basketball game.  As he is warming up, Coach Murphy (Jim Gaffigan) informs Mike that college recruiters will be on hand to watch his performance.  You might also be surprised to know that Mike is not your typical jock.  Just prior to tip-off, he insists that the dorky waterboy, Ned Gold (Tyler Steelman), be included in their team photograph.  As for the game, as they are getting ready to take the floor, Mike’s girlfriend, Scarlet Porter (Allison Miller), shows up with some life-altering news: she is pregnant.  While she wants him to play and pursue his dreams, he leaves the court within seconds of the beginning.  Nearly twenty years pass and the grown-up Mike (Matthew Perry) wakes up in a bed in Ned’s (Thomas Lennon) guest bedroom.  While the former nerd is still a nerd, Ned has become a wealthy one with the ability to repay the kindness shown him by allowing Mike to stay there after Scarlet (Leslie Mann) kicked him out of the house. His day does not get better.  At a meeting at work, he is passed over for a promotion for somebody who has been with the company for two months, while he has been there for sixteen years.  His angry outburst over the injustice gets him fired.  Cooling off at his old high school, where his son, Alex O’Donnell (Sterling Knight), and daughter, Maggie O’Donnell (Michelle Trachtenberg), now attend, Mike is greeted by a janitor (Brian Doyle-Murray).  Mike is taken aback when the janitor knows his name, though in that moment he had been looking at the picture of himself with his high school basketball team.  In any case, the janitor can tell Mike is reminiscing and conjectures that if the former hooper had a chance redo his life, Mike would.  Mike agrees far too readily, but the janitor disappears in the next second.  With that, Mike takes his kids to get ice cream, and it is apparent they do not appreciate him.  The same could be said for Scarlet, which is why she is divorcing Mike, citing his inability to be reliable.  He then blames her for the misery he has been feeling for the past two decades.  On his drive back to Ned’s, Mike sees the janitor on a rain swept bridge seemingly about to jump.  Stopping to help, Mike peers over the edge and falls into a swirling vortex below.  The next thing we see is him slogging his way into the house, but then noticing that he is transformed into his seventeen-year-old self.  Once Ned has recovered from the shock and realizes who this person is, he suggests that the janitor, the apparent key to it all, is a “spirit guide” for Mike.  This Catholic was not keen on this terminology, but the long-and-short of it is that Mike is supposed to complete some kind of task.  In returning to the high school in an attempt to find the janitor, Mike realizes that he must enroll in classes.  With Ned posing as Mike’s dad, they meet with the principal, Jane Masterson (Melora Hardin), on whom Ned develops a bizarre crush.  At any rate, Mike’s attendance allows him to get back into his children’s lives, albeit in a sometimes-awkward way.  It begins with Alex, who Mike finds duct taped to a toilet.  Alex had been the victim of bullying at the hands of Stan (Hunter Parrish).  This is a problem for a few reasons.  First, it means Alex had not been playing basketball as he said; second, Stan is the captain of said team; and finally, Maggie is dating Stan.  In response, Stan spends a lot of time with Alex helping his son with his game, which also means shooting baskets at the house where Scarlet is stunned to meet Alex’s new friend “Mark,” who is the image of her husband as a teenager.  It is the beginning of a romance that brushes up against the bounds of propriety, particularly when Mike tries to prevent her from going on a date with another man.  Getting back to Alex, not only does Mike get Alex onto the basketball team, but father feeds son the ball for a game winning shot.  In the aftermath, Mike also helps Alex get the confidence needed for the boy to approach his crush.  The situation with Maggie gets a little more complicated for Mike.  At one point, Mike finds her crying after being dumped by Stan for not having sex.  When Mike comforts his daughter, she evidently does not know Mike is her dad and switches her affections to him.  At a party he throws to celebrate Alex’s victory, Maggie tries to seduce Mike.  So, yeah, that is not ideal. . . .  Of course, the popular again Mike could have any girl he wants, but his love for his wife is such that he declares it for her at their divorce hearing.  It is enough for Scarlet to postpone the proceedings.  Thus, we get a recreation of the earlier basketball scene, with Mike again running off the court to find Scarlet.  When he does so, he changes back to his adult form.

Just before not being 17 Again, we see the so-called “spirit guide” janitor as Mike runs out of the gym to catch up with Scarlet.  As mentioned in the synopsis, it is Ned who comes up with the notion of a spirit guide, getting his inspiration from comic books and other works of fantasy.  Even if you could apply that label to the janitor, I am not sure it is one that fits.  Admittedly, I also saw this as a practicing Catholic.  The lazy comparison would be the Holy Spirit.  Please forgive the use of a pejorative, but the two are not comparable.  Granted, seeing the Holy Spirit in the form of a janitor is as rare as it in the movie.  Could God appear to someone is this fashion?  Of course He could.  The pastor of my parish likes to use a phrase when talking about the Transubstantiation that takes place at Mass as being the work of the same God who created the cosmos.  If our God can make all that, it stands to reason that He could change mere bread into His substance, or intervene in our lives in a moment of need to put us on the right path.  It would also stand to reason that He could revert us to our teenage bodies if He deemed it necessary for us to learn a lesson.  At the same time, you have to ask yourself if that is necessary?  There are many times when we think we know better than God, believing if we could just have our way, like being seventeen again, everything would be okay.  The obvious response to that is that He knows better.  Not to sound like a broken record, but the Creator should have an understanding of our lives beyond our own.  To this viewer, all this sounds a lot better than a potentially magical, disappearing and reappearing, so-called spirit guide.  One could make the cynical argument that God barely appears in our lives, but that is ignoring all the things He does without our knowledge.  It should be noted that this film is a comedy, and I do not think this character is meant to be taken seriously.  I just want to emphasize that the real Holy Spirit is much more satisfactory.

Having said that, 17 Again is more satisfactory of a view than you would expect.  I picked on the concept of the spirit guide, but I could have focused on the pro-abstinence message.  It is ironic that kids who want to be promiscuous when they are young, grow up to be proponents of no sex before marriage like any good Catholic.  The film does a pretty good job of demonstrating why this is a good idea.  As such, call this a vague recommendation.