17 Again...

With the boys all venturing out and doing guy-things this weekend, Kelsey and I decided to have some girls' time.

We went to see Zac Efron in 17 Again. As I seem to be on a trend of rating things, I'm going to have to give 17 Again two thumbs up too. Zac has perfected the slightly-confused, partially-flustered, yet totally-hot look for adolescent males. Not that I find the dude "hot," but I believe the girl sitting to my left actually swooned in a couple of places during the movie.

Before we watch any movie at the theater, I always read the review on Plugged In online. Most of my parents-of-teenagers buds do too. It is, hands-down, the very best movie review resource out there for Christians. I have no idea who these reviewers are, but I stand in awe of their ability to track EVERYTHING in the movie... profanity (words, context, frequency), sexual content (type, context, frequency), drug and alcohol content (type, frequency, attitude), violent content (type, context, frequency, nature), etc. There is no way one reviewer can track all that stuff. There has to be a team with the profanity-counters and spiritual content analysts. And they're smart. And focused. My ADD-self can hardly fathom how they do it.

Anyway... I read the review and knew there were some "things" in it that I didn't want Kelsey to see unless we could talk about them. I didn't want her to walk away from it thinking that the world's way of handling teen relationships was OK ... as long as you love someone, you are fine getting physical. OR... if you make some bad choices, it's nothing that a little medical procedure or a few thousand dollars to an attorney can't fix. But when I actually sat and watched it, I was pleasantly surprised. Instead, the movie is all about owning your choices and embracing your responsibilities. And love. True love. The kind that covers a multitude of sins.

I didn't like the fact that the whole journey for Efron's character was courtesy of a Spirit Guide. Bleh. It said a lot about where we've come spiritually in the last 50 years. The dude looks like Clarence, but is a Spirit Guide instead of an angel. Ridiculous.

I LOVED hearing the abstinence speech coming from the 17-year-old mouth of the almost-40-ish-year-old dad. It was a great speech and a wonderful wake-up call. We all need to be a little more into our kids' worlds. The dad found words for his concerns when he literally lived life in his kids' world; he had no shortage of words (nor a lack of courage to use them) when he walked into the middle of a health class where the teacher was saying the school policy was teaching abstinence, but handing out condoms with the concession that kids will do it anyway, so they need to do it safely.

Yes, there are plenty of opportunities in this movie to see teen girls and guys kissing and hinting at more. But it seems... so... icky. And gross. There is nothing appealing in the way the daughter and her boyfriend "relate" to one another. It's just... yucky. Which is pretty accurate for real life, too, when we jump out of the beauty of our Creator's design for love relationships.

I've been chatting with a friend who shares my burden for young women and their moms. Seems that in just about every bad choice situation, there's an overwhelming lack of communication between parents and children. Not all those situations, but many of them. I bet if we could BE in their world, we'd all find the words (and courage to use them) to tell our kids there's a better way. And we'd do it with a sense of urgency and compassion and love, not so much the lightning-bolt-from-Olympus-if-you-mess-up way.

That said, whoever made the movie had quite the grasp on many cultural undercurrents, from the bizarre back-stabbing nature of the pharma sales industry to the curriculum's-a-joke nature of schools to the tendency for people to put blame for their bad choices on the ones they love the most.

I was SO tired last night and I really didn't want to brave the sticky theater floors to watch a teen movie, but I am oh-so-very glad that the Lord gave me the grace to get over myself and go. Somewhere in the midst of that theater and in our conversation that ran throughout the rest of the evening, I feel like I connected with my girls in HER world.

And that was very, very cool.