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“’What-if’ questions often generate very enjoyable writing, especially in the romantic comedy genre, for which we’re more happy to suspend our disbelief than usual…” Comments by us and Extracts from a script report by our trainee Daniela Piper-Vegh, based on a reading of the script 17 AGAIN: CLICK HERE

TITLE: 17  Again                                            LOCALE: Suburban Town

AUTHOR: Jason Filardi                  SETTING: High School  

WRITER A CLIENT?: N/A            PERIOD: Present/ 80’s

GENRE:                 PRIMARY: Romantic Comedy

SECONDARY: Coming of Age

 

CHARACTER BREAKDOWN:

MIKE O’DONNELL (M/ approx.17 and 36) Protagonist who is dissatisfied with his adult life, gets to go back to 17 and make his important life decisions again.

SCARLET (F/ approx. 17 and 36) Mike’s high school girlfriend who tries to divorce him at 36.

ED FREEDMAN (M/ approx. 17 and 36) Mike’s best friend from high school, who helps Mike with money and his spiritual journey.

ALEX O’DONNELL (M/ approx. 15) Mike’s socially awkward son.

MAGGIE O’DONNELL (F/ approx. 17) Mike’s daughter who doesn’t know if she will accept her place at Georgetown because of her boyfriend.


LOGLINE: A middle-aged man who is dissatisfied with his life, gets the chance to go back to his glory days as a 17 year-old, to discover whether or not he would make the same choices again.

COMMENTS:

The story follows a clear structure, with the protagonist Mike having a definitive objective from the beginning. The main conflict is two-fold, with situational conflict deriving from Mike being stuck in his 17 year old body until he has learnt his lesson, and emotional conflict developing from Mike wanting to grow closer to his children and to win back his wife Scarlet. There is also an important emotional arc for Mike, as he has to come to terms with his teenage decisions and realize what is most important to him. There is a clear sense of the stakes, as if Mike does not succeed in winning back Scarlet, then she plans to divorce him and he will lose his family. Although the inciting incident of Mike turning back into his 17 year old self is not totally believable, the audience can look past this detail in order to get to the main action of the story. The inter-personal conflict with Mike trying to act as a father to his children whilst in a 17 year old body, leads to some very amusing situations. The misunderstandings caused by Mike being protective of Maggie are particularly awkward and entertaining. Although there is no clear antagonist who threatens Mike, it is not uncommon for stories of this genre. The antagonistic force is rather within Mike himself, as he has to learn to let go of his bitterness and to stop blaming others for the decisions that he chose to make.

The dialogue is often witty and filled with modern teenage slang terms. These current-day expressions may need to be updated if the setting of the script is supposed to be present day rather than 2008. There is strong audience potential for a romantic comedy set in a high school, as it has could attract young emerging talent. Mike’s 36 year old perspective in a teenage body also gives the script a unique point of view, easily distinguishing it from other popular rom-coms or coming of age stories.

Ian adds:

‘What-if’ questions often generate very enjoyable writing, especially in the romantic comedy genre, for which we’re more happy to suspend our disbelief than usual (rom-coms are usually a kind of wish-fulfilment for audiences anyway): GROUNDHOG DAY, LIAR LIAR, and BIG being three famous comparable examples, and SLIDING DOORS and RUN LOLA RUN also worth considering. As audiences, we accept that normal causality doesn’t apply to a story with a ‘What-if’ premise, but only in the one main respect which is the core premise of the story: otherwise, the world portrayed in these stories is usually as closely relatable to our own as possible.

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