17 Again? No thanks.

As much as I'd rather not live high school all over again, I'd forgotten how much my sense of time gets screwed over when I'm in college. I've been at Duke since Saturday night, and when some friends asked me today what I'd done since Saturday, I blinked at them stupidly and realized that I have done nothing productive in the last two days. Okay sure, I responded to e-mails and facebook posts and set up an appointment with my adviser. I read half of a book my mom told me to read (titled "Making the Most of College"... ha-ha!) and did some more storyline revisions. But in terms of productive output? I should have been able to accomplish all that my first night back.

And to prove my point about how much I waste my time, I've decided to write another movie review. (Man, these things usually end up killing three hours at minimum...)

I technically could have watched this months ago, back in July when I was flying to Taiwan. I could have chosen to watch both this movie and that Hannah Montana movie with Miley and Lucas Till one after the other. Frankly, that would have been been tween-girl's-dream-movie-marathon overkill. But the main reason I didn't watch it was the same reason I was cringing with a blanket over my head when I watched it with my parents two days before my winter break ended.

Why? Probably the same reason my mom got up and left every time Bradley Cooper started canoodling with Scarlett Johansson in He's Just Not That Into You -- I can't watch movies that make me wince (and my mom cannot watch any adultery on TV without cringing). And watching an adult try to act like a teenager at the same high school as his daughter... ughhh. Awkward. But I did manage to sit through the whole thing, so at least give me kudos for that.

So... I had some issues with this movie. Granted, it wasn't mudstinking terrible -- it was actually fairly funny on certain occasions. But for a cynic like me who takes everything far too seriously than it's supposed to be, there were way too many unconvincing holes in this story. I would love to go through the whole story and butcher it organically like I did with Snow White, but this movie was way too long and I have to go pick up my textbooks in thirty minutes. Instead, I'll just pick a few points that anyone who has not watched the movie probably won't understand.

Note: This movie has been out long enough that I don't care if I'm spoiling anything. So read at your own risk.

1. Zac Efron + 18 years = Matthew Perry?

...eh, I guess when you look at these two pictures side-by-side, you can kind of see the resemblance. But when I was watching the movie, I could not connect these two at all. Logically, how in the world would the charismatic high school basketball star doing dance routines with the cheerleaders end up promotionless for sixteen years at a pharmaceutical company trying to market drugs for erectile dysfunction patients? You'd think he could charm some of those female superiors into getting a promotion or something. Instead, the lines of Matthew Perry's face seem to be slanted permanently downward. I don't know about you, but Zac Efron struck me as too extroverted to let himself end up in a dead-end job.

Oh, and I could have made a joke about the Zac Efron/Matthew Perry character working for a company selling ED drugs, but I decided not to.

2. With only a high school diploma, you can earn enough money to get a backyard like this...?

For a family with two parents with only high school diplomas, I'd say they lived pretty well off. They had enough money to own two fairly decent cars. The house seemed about the same size as mine, and my parents both have doctorate degrees (then again, I live in the part of the US with the highest living costs). But as impressive as Scarlet's backyard renovation was, how in the world did she find the money to have her little pet project?? Unless Ned was secretly paying for everything, we can only speculate what kind of jobs Scarlet was doing on the side to earn all that money.

3. Hmm... what's a good way to mentally torture Sophelia?

Meanwhile, Sophelia hollers "AGHHHHHHHHHH" in the background.

I took the script off of imsdb.com, since I don't remember the exact lines. The script isn't the same as the movie, but the general gist is the same.

Scene: Michelle Trachtenberg's attempt to seduce Zac Efron, aka her father
Movie cuts to a different scene, and we see Mike (Zac Efron)'s head on Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg)'s lap. He jumps off the bed and scrambles to the other side of the room. She leaps off the bed.

Maggie: You wanna play? Okay, let's play. I'm the hungry lioness and you're a baby gazelle.

To prove her point, she roars and chases him around the room, making all these horrendous animal sounds.

Mike: Wait! This is highly inappropriate and dysfunctional. Listen to me, Maggie. I'm your father.

Maggie: And I've been a bad, bad girl, Daddy.

Now you can picture me holding a blanket over my head while I'm watching this with both my parents, while I'm telepathically screaming at the TV to Maggie, "AGHHHH GET AWAY FROM YOUR FATHER YOU PSYCHO HORNY ANIMAL!!!"

Yes, I had some issues with Michelle Trachtenberg's character as well. Firstly, I never quite understood how she ended up dating Stan, his royal blondness and the captain of the basketball team. Maggie struck me more as the kind of smart (hey, she got into Georgetown) low-key sort of girl leaning towards indie and rock tastes rather than mainstream bubblegum pop music. And typically, I'd associate "girlfriend of basketball captain" to that sort of glossed up style instead. I suppose I'm resorting to stereotypes, but why Stan went after Maggie rather than one of those cheerleaders hitting on Zac Efon at the party is beyond me.

Secondly, why would the girl who was dumped because she wouldn't have sex with her boyfriend suddenly try to seduce another boy whom she even claims is "different from the others"? Where did all that animalistic yapping and growling come from? You'd think if a girl could act like that with a guy she barely knows (okay, technically not really... she's known him all her life), she'd have already given it up to Stan.

4. Worst Case of Timing... EVER

I'm convinced with Scarlet was in an altered state of mind when she decided to divulge her pregnancy to Mike. If she could have picked the worst moment to do so, that was it. I mean, I can understand she must have been scared out of her mind when she discovered that she was pregnant. But did she REALLY have to dump the news right before her boyfriend is about to play the most important basketball game of his life? And then, after he chases after her down the hall, she tells him she doesn't want him to give up his dreams for her? I mean, hello? You telling him you're pregnant at that particular moment basically ensures he can either give up his basketball dreams or end up looking like an asshole.

So those were essentially my biggest problems with this movie. I do have to say that Ned and his attempts to woo the school principal were funny. And now, I need to go enjoy the rest of my freedom before classes resume tomorrow. Wish me luck.