Quite obviously, it's an adolescent chick flick.

Mike O'Donnell (Matthew Parry as an adult, Zac Effron as the teenager) is a loser in his job and at home with divorcing wife & two unhappy teenagers; he longs for the good ole days when he was a star basketball player at his high school, and - wham - he gets his chance to return to that fateful day when he goofed up and spoiled the rest of his life. Does he do it correctly the second time around? One guess.

It's a formula flick with minor departures that screenwriter Jason Filardi pulls together with one hand tied behind his back - tugs all the right strings - full of high school clichés (athletic bully vs good guy, teen romance, the obligatory drunken party, the big game, sexy cheerleaders, et al) - a mix of teen raunchiness followed by rueful lessons learned, rejuvenation & all that stuff - with lines you've heard ad-libbed over & over in any high school flick. Director Burr Steers steers the material like a trouper, staying firmly within the bounds of the well-worn formula, ably guiding his cast on that well trodden path.

One character's defining of the bully, "His brain is under his belt," pretty well defines the entire slant of the film; it starts off with no less than three quick shots to the groins and goes steadily into the now familiar kind of suggestive libidinous material without end.
There's not a doubt of Effron's rise to high pedestal here, starting with an early scene of him, bare-chested, dropping shot after shot into the hoop, all sweaty, hair-mussed & smiling modestly. You can almost hear the teen hearts throbbing. He is the drawing talent here, and he performs well within his limited range, while Thomas Lennon comes a close second with his role as buddy and sci-fi kook.

There are brief moments of lucidity, contradicted by a confusing structure, possibly in editing but also in intent, leaving one wondering: is this a high school romance? A romance with a moral? Rank satire? Fantasy? A Zac Effron draw? A little of each or anything else thrown in to keep up the suspense? All of the above? By film's end, I no longer cared. Right down to the final cliché it was all too expected. Well regurjitated. No surprises here.