Despite having a title that reminds us of that George Burns-Charlie Schlatter role-reversal movie from the ‘80s, 17 Again is not in fact part of the body swap genre. Rather, it’s more like Peggy Sue Got Married without the time travel. It’s also like a backwards Big, a movie many people mistakenly assign to the genre, which more technically includes such classics as The Hot Chick, Dream a Little Dream and Like Father Like Son. Of course, age-swapping films like Big, 13 Going on 30 and now 17 Again share many conventions and clichés with body swapping movies, so aligning them with that genre’s films is not entirely a film classification no-no.
Most familiar body swap movies owe their basic plot structure to F. Anstey’s 1882 novel Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers, which is, yes, the source material behind the 1988 movie starring Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold, as well as the basis for four other, prior film adaptations and a short-lived TV series. Even the three movie versions of Freaky Friday are more akin to Anstey’s story than the Mary Rodgers’ novel on which they’re based. In a way, because of the lesson learned in 17 Again, this new movie is also reminiscent of Anstey’s novel, even if not in a walking-in-someone-else’s-shoes sort of method.
But are there any other similarities to the body swap genre? You decide. While watching 17 Again this weekend, be on the look out for any of the clichés of the body swap movie, which we illustrate below, in order to determine its closeness to the classification.
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