Try Seventeen (2002)

IMDb plot summary: The story of a young man who enters college only to discover that he can learn more about life and love from his neighbors in the apartment building where he lives.

Directed by Jeffrey Porter. Starring Elijah Wood, Franka Potente, and Mandy Moore.

Try Seventeen stars Elijah Wood as a 17-year-old starting college and then immediately dropping out, moving into an apartment with two women who are into him, and trying to work through his complicated relationship with his mother and the father he never met. And it's a weird mess of a movie. Wood's character arc is nearly incomprehensible. We can't tell what he wants or what he's trying to do, he's just kind of floating through the movie as things happen around him that apparently contribute to his character growth, but none of it is done well. Especially early on, it can't quite decide if it wants to be a dark quirky comedy or an earnest coming-of-age story, and jumping back and forth doesn't help at all with understanding what we're supposed to be rooting for. I'm especially disappointed with how underdeveloped the subplot is between our lead and his mother, which feels like there's unmined depth there, and the movie just... gives up on it in favor of much less compelling stories. A bland and sloppy film that never reaches its potential.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Try Seventeen < Pete's Dragon (1977)

Try Seventeen > K-19: The Widowmaker

Try Seventeen < Anchors Aweigh

Try Seventeen < The Lost Weekend

Try Seventeen < Sliding Doors

Try Seventeen < Fracture

Try Seventeen > The Da Vinci Code

Try Seventeen < The Three Faces of Eve

Try Seventeen < The 5th Wave

Try Seventeen < Falling in Love

Try Seventeen < Side Effects

Try Seventeen > Walking Across Egypt

Final spot: #2935 out of 3956, or 26%.