Luckily, as I say, this fear is slight and fleeting, but thanks to the release of 17 Again in cinemas, I’ve found myself visually forced to contemplate the kind of horrendous waking reality that renders eternal sleep a state of eternal bliss. Imagine, if your nerves can stand it, rising in the early morning light, stumbling into the bathroom and looking into the mirror to find that you’ve turned into – horror! – Zac Efron. I’m all for giving men in the midst of a mid-life crisis a vivid shake-up to reiterate some core values and fire ‘em up out of their wallowing regret and self-pity, but turning them into Zac Efron is way too extreme a step. What do you mean you wouldn’t mind waking up to discover that you’re a hot young thing loved by the world and its little sister? I warn you, readers: don’t capitulate to the cult-of-no-personality. He’s the cold blue-eyed base upon which the universal forces of evil are building their scheme of world domination. Whilst the rest of the High School Musical stable of ‘talents’ tighten their grip across kids’ TV and poppy R&B music, Efron has been employed to tackle the adults, already taking every opportunity to outline a future ambition of “serious acting roles”, aloofly underplaying his tweeny-bopper ascent and praising Leonardo DiCaprio as his inspiration. Whether you find him dreamy or drippy, you’d be wrong to dismiss the 17 Again star as a harmless clean teen idol; he’s a cold-hearted megalomaniac who reminds me of Ozymandias from Watchmen, with despicable designs on total supremacy and the eradication of all that doesn’t bow down to his desire for a utopian Disneyfied world. Pity poor Matthew Perry;he’s woken to find that he is evil incarnate. So goes one nightmare that lives outside the Land of Nod. You could go on forever recalling all the outlandish dream sequences and trips of reverie that have troubled, traumatised or tantalised characters though film history, but thinking on the frightening circumstances of 17 Again, I’m drawn to consider The Wizard Of Oz. Having Dorothy’s adventure in Oz brought about by a tremendous tornado is a captivating and creative idea, so to find at the end that it was ‘all a dream’ comes as a disappointing anti-climax. It’s an irritating cop-out and I don’t completely believe Dorothy’s relief at waking from her delusional drift to find herself back home with Auntie Em in Kansas. Why on Earth would she want to trade in the technicolour thrills of Oz for a dim life in the Midwestern dustbowl? She had a place in the Munchkin Hall of Fame! She had a set of unique, loyal and lovable friends! Despite it all, she’d still rather go through the motions in the sepia-tinged struggle of mundane depression-era America rather than literally live the dream. Where’s your imagination, Dorothy? What happened to your desire to fly off Somewhere Over The Rainbow? Given the choice, I’d give the ruby slipper heel-click trick a miss and ignore the “there’s no place like home” hogwash (which, funnily enough, is Dorothy’s fate for the rest of her life upon returning to the pigsty and patronising tutelage of Auntie Em back on the farm). If I could stay within the dream, I’d happily laugh the days away in the merry old Land of Oz than wake up to mundane reality. Maybe I’m being melodramatic and overly malicious towards the High School Musical teen hero, but I reckon that if Neo, instead of finding himself skinny, naked and suspended in a pod as a power source, awoke to find that, actually, the truth looks like Zac Efron, he’d have done more than throw up at the feet of Morpheus. It’s enough to make anyone ask: “Why didn’t I take the blue pill?” Facing up to that kind of cataclysmic revelation in the early morning light, I know I’d rather return to bury my head beneath the bedsheets in blissful ignorance. Lay me down with sedatives – I can’t handle the truth! James’ previous column can be found here.
