Take Me Home Tonight [DVD]

As the summer of 1988 winds down, three friends on the verge of adulthood attend an out-of-control party in celebration of their last night of unbridled youth. Starring Topher Grace, Anna Faris, Dan Fogler, and Teresa Palmer, Take Me Home Tonight is a raunchy, romantic, and ultimately touching blast from the past set to an awesome soundtrack of timeless rock and hip-hop hits.

Recent MIT grad Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) should be working for a Fortune 500 company and starting his upward climb to full-fledged yuppie-hood. Instead, the directionless 23-year-old confounds family and friends by taking a part-time job behind the counter of a video store at the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

But Matt's silent protest against maturity comes to a screeching halt once his unrequited high school crush, Tori Frederking (Teresa Palmer), walks into the store. When she invites him to an epic, end-of-summer party, Matt thinks he finally might have a chance with the girl of his dreams. With his cynical twin sister Wendy (Anna Faris) and best friend Barry (Dan Fogler), Matt embarks on a once-in-a-lifetime evening.

From stealing a car to a marriage proposal to an indescribable, no-holds-barred dance-off, these friends share experiences that will change the course of their lives on one unforgettable night in the Go-Go '80s. One last blowout before reality sets in it's Labour Day 1988, and although they graduated from high school four years earlier, the kids from the class of '84 get together for a party that will surely (because we're watching a movie about it) settle old scores and kindle new romance. But a little creative improvisation will be necessary for Matt Franklin (Topher Grace, who also co-produced and co-wrote the story), who is wasting his degree from MIT on a summer job at Suncoast Video he's just told his secret high-school crush (Teresa Palmer) that he works for Goldman Sachs--and she's going to be at the party.

Throw in Matt's loud and newly unemployed buddy (Dan Fogler), who has just found a baggie of cocaine in the glove compartment of the car he "borrowed" from his former job, as well as Matt's ambivalent sister (Anna Faris, not quite unleashed enough), and the ingredients are there for an epic night. That's clearly the intention for this movie, and while the ideas are all in place, its grasp of comedy and drama feels generally forced.

Forced in its song list, too: all the lumbering behemoths of '80s rock are rolled out, from "Der Kommissar" to Dexy's Midnight Runners. For anybody with a nostalgia jones for the 1980s, there are enough funny bits along the way to justify a look, and the supporting cast has its share of craziness: Chris Pratt as the clueless host of the party, Demetri Martin as a disgruntled classmate, Michael Ian Black as the dream girl's douche-bag boss. And any movie that sets Balls of Fury cutup Fogler on a toot will not lack in energy.

But nope, Take Me Home Tonight falls short of the realm of American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused, to which it obviously aspires, and no amount of Wang Chung on the soundtrack is going to hide that. --Robert Horton.