Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

If I had seen this movie ‘Shapeshifter’ when The Asylum unleashed it back 2005 I would’ve been howling at the moon at how shitty this movie was. However that was before I dedicated myself to apparently watching just about anything done by anybody. Now years of watching movies of suspect origins have eroded my movie watching sensibilities, probably irreparably, and thus while I watched this movie ‘Shapeshifter’ some four years after its initial release I could see some of the good in it. Oh, it is terrible in every sense of the word terrible but it was not without its… charms. I hold The Asylum themselves responsible for a large part of this erosion of senses as one can only watch so many ‘Transmorphers’, ‘Supercrocs’ and ‘Alien Vs. Hunters’ before those effects start to take their toll, a toll that leads us to watch a movie such as ‘Shapeshifter’, conclude that it was terrible but close out with the statement ‘hey, it WAS better than Supercroc’.

The very pretty Jennifer Lee Wiggins plays the character of prison security guard Ginny Lydon. I think I’ve seen every movie that Ms. Wiggins has been in which probably isn’t all that great for her career. Anyway this is Ginny’s first night on the job at this ‘progressive’ prison in which prisoners pretty much have free run of the joint. Soon the prison gets a new transient in some silent, weird looking Romanian dude with an ugly tattoo on his chest (Vas Andreas). We know already that this Romanian dude is really an evil monster since we saw him eat a prolific Asylum film director and some poor girl they convinced to show us her tits early on the movie, so we know its just a matter of time before this cat turns into a monster in this facility and starts eating these prisoners.

And what a lively bunch of prisoners it is. There’s the uber obnoxious Tyrese played some single named cat calling himself Ocean. Now Ocean does take the role of Obnoxious Black Dude to the next level in this movie but he does bear a shocking

blaming my wife for ruining my life for the last fifteen years. What an asshole that dude is. So one day while reminiscing at the old high school about how great life used to be back in the day Mike runs into one of those weird old mystical type dudes that movies like this always have and through a series of unlikely and illogical circumstances Mike is seventeen one more time again.

Now the young Mike has to pretend to be bastard child of his best friend Ned (Thomas Lennon), a man with a geek level that has few peers, but one who has turned this geekiness into untold riches. Mike’s current task it to figure out why this amazing thing has happened and thus he is thrust back into high school to guide his misguided children, a son who is a bullied loser and a daughter who is sliding down the slippery slope that her mom traveled, that would be hooking up with bitter loser who will blame her for ruining his life. Not to mention a wife who is moving on to a life without him. Will Mike be able to fix any of these things? Uh… yeah? Sorry to spoil it for you.

While watching this movie Zac Efron reminded me a bit of my generation’s version of Zac Efron and that would be Rob Lowe with the exception being that Efron is a bit more talented than Mr. Lowe. And while I’m thinking it about make sure you examine those I.D’s before checking into a hotel with a couple of cutie pies Zac. Yes ‘17 Again’ is painfully predictable and doesn’t do anything fresh, unique or original that any of us over the age of twelve haven’t seen before, but we accept this short coming as a given nowadays. We just want to be entertained with tight confines of any formulaic comedy and by golly if this movie doesn’t do just that. The majority of the credit for this has to go to Efron who was in practically every scene in this flick and thus its success or failure rests squarely on his shoulders. The kid dusted off all of his triple-threat tools for this one showing off his basketball skills, a definite flair for comedy, hitting us with a little dramatic action here and there and even blessing us with his dancing skills picked up from that High School Musical nonsense, though informed my son it probably should be called Grad School Musical since those kids should’ve got out of High Schoo a long time ago.

Director Burr Steers competently guides a movie that somehow manages to have some smart dialog strewn amidst its unavoidably predictable nature, the supporting cast led by Lt. Dangle was mostly amusing and like we said, the movie was funny.

So while we over here recognize that this movie breaks new ground in absolutely nothing and probably started out in life on a Warner Brothers basement lot as a simple vehicle to launch Zac Efron into leading man stardom, it is surprising that this still managed to be entertaining to someone other than girl tweens… and some guy I know who claimed to see this movie on the front that his daughter thinks that Zac Efron is cute. I see right that ruse.