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Posted
Friday, April 17, 2009 12:35 PM
| By
Willa Paskin
See, when Mike was 17, and a star basketball player with a bright future, his pretty girlfriend informed him she was with child. He decided to do the "right thing" (as EW's Lisa Schwarzbaum says, "Levi Johnston, consider yourself schooled.") and happily married his sweetheart. But 20 years later, Mike's decision has had unpleasant consequences. Mike never went to college, so he's been overlooked time and time again for a promotion. He's also spent the last two decades bitterly resenting his wife and kids for the sacrifices he made to be with them. Sacrifices that have kept him from the life he thinks he should have, and could have, had. So Mike wishes he could be 17 again, before he gave up his future for his family.
Unsurprisingly, the film goes out of its way to neutralize this message—that teen parenthood might require enormous, painful sacrifices that don't always pay off—by having Mike "realize," thanks to his repeat performance as a 17-year-old, that his wife and kids are the most important thing in his life and he really ought to appreciate them more.
The movie is schizophrenic about teenagers, sex and responsibility in other ways as well. When Mike returns to high school and condoms are being distributed in his health class he makes an impassioned plea for abstinence. This is played for laughs—Mike's daughter is in his class, and of course he doesn't want her having sex-—but since we know Mike was having sex in high school, and obviously without condoms, it's unfathomably short sighted. Wouldn't this man, of all men, know the importance of protection? Probably, but then he'd have to advocate condom usage—and God forbid a film intended for real teenagers do anything like that.
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