Take Me Home Tonight

Introduction

The 80's seem to be making a small step towards a comeback in the cinema. After last year's rather funny Hot Tub Time Machine, which featured old friends revisiting the best decade via a big bath, a new film from director Michael Dowse and Topher Grace (who co-produced and co-wrote the story) actually sees us right back in the 80's without any time trip trickery.

It's 1988, Los Angeles. Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) is a rather clever dude, having recently graduated from MIT. Problem is, he can't quite decide what to do with his life and in the meantime appears to be stuck aimlessly stacking shelves at Suncoast, the local video store. Things change for him when his ex-High School crush turns up unexpectedly.

Matt manages to hide the fact he is currently employed there and strikes up the courage to have a conversation with Tori (Teresa Palmer). She vaguely remembers him as that clever guy from her class and mentions that she is now working for a large bank. Matt is unable to stop himself from lying about his own prospects and tells her he is working for Goldman Sachs, despite the fact that the company doesn't have an office in the city. Tori mentions the hottest party in town and asks Matt if he's going, to which Matt, who always avoids these things, immediately responds that he'll be there.

With the chance to finally get to know his school crush better, Matt enlists the help of twin sister Wendy (Anna Faris) and best friend Barry (Dan Fogler). Wendy is a sarcastic and mocking sibling, while Barry is a little histrionic and recently fired as an aspiring car salesman with a rather over the top sales pitch. Both will do their best to help him in his quest to impress Tori.

It starts with the borrowing of a convertible Mercedes, but just where will it end…

Visual

Director Mike Dowse manages to make the late 80's setting look realistic enough, but in fairness only has a couple of sets in which to do it. The film is relatively limited in locations and therefore doesn't have to worry so much as you would in bigger or more expansive films. Still, that's an awful lot of VHS boxes…

Audio

It's a Universal release so plenty of soundtrack and subtitling options. It must be said that this is one of the best 80's soundtracks I've heard in a while, really mixed but with a real emphasis on tracks that I loved back in the day. Only a few I didn't recognise and one that I wasn't too enamoured with (Straight Outta Compton, but it worked within context). It kicks off with Buggles, and takes in the likes of Duran Duran, Inxs, Book of Love, Yazoo, Kim Carnes, Men Without Hats and a load of others before finishing rather brilliantly with Opus's Live Is Life. No Flock of Seagulls though, which is surprising…

My only complaint really is a modern guitar version of Human League's Don't You Want Me, but I guess that this may be the influence of Donnie Darko and actually it's not a bad version.

Extras

None at all…

Overall

Take Me Home Tonight is not the most original of films, essentially being an amalgam of loads of previous films from the decade including more than one John Hughes classic. On the other hand it's quite a laidback comedy that is quite endearing and actually feels quite close in spirit to those films.

Topher Grace makes the transition from TV comedy That 70's Show into the next decade with relative ease, but in reality this film doesn't stretch him too far as this is really just a slightly more grown up Eric Forman, although he has Michael Biehn as his dad instead of Kurtwood Smith. Dan Fogler was someone I really thought was going to ruin this film as the 'wild and outrageous' buddy, but actually he gets some of the funniest scenes without actually affecting the film that much or getting in the way of the main storyline. Fogler's sex scene is absolutely fantastic and his scene with the cocaine and delayed air bag is deadpan funny.

As to the girls…Anna Faris as the twin sister is almost wasted. She has some good screen time with Topher Grace but is mainly stuck with rather vapid boyfriend Kyle (Chris Pratt) and a quite boring storyline regarding young marriage or the chance to see the world - which would make you happy? Teresa Palmer does a good job as the girl in Topher's sights, striking the balance well between unavailable and down to earth as the film progresses.

The film overall has a central premise of fear in young children. John Hughes et all showed us the fear of not conforming or being popular whilst in high school. Dowse is about the fear of growing into adults once school is over and what we can make of our lives. It's the confusion of working out just what is out there in terms of opportunities and decisions we make that could affect the rest of our lives.

Take Me Home Tonight doesn't bear up to close examination but is a warm enough film that only takes place over a single night and is really just an extended party sequence. Not bad at all, brings back some memories and that'll do for me…