Take Me Home Tonight

Take Me Home Tonight is a not very good but largely inoffensive film that is based almost entirely on nostalgia. It's the kind of movie that seems to have started with a song list, the script coming far late in the game. That, even though the title song, by Eddie Money, isn't heard in the film.

Directed by Michael Dowse with no particular style, the film was made in 2007 and sat on the shelf until 2011. It's set in 1988 during one night on Labor Day weekend. In the familiar "nerd chases prom queen" template, Topher Grace is a recent MIT graduate who can't figure out what he wants to do and works at a video store, much to the consternation of his cop father (Michael Biehn). He has heard that his high school crush (Teresa Palmer) is in town, and he tells his best friend, Dan Fogler (playing the archetype of the fat and obnoxious sidekick) that he will score with her. He runs into her at the video store, but whips off his store uniform and tells her he's working at Goldman Sachs.

There's a big party thrown that night at Grace's twin sister's (Anna Faris) dolt of a boyfriend (Chris Pratt). They will hit it off, but of course sooner or later he will have to tell her the truth, and most of the film is just treading water until that moment. There's a lot of '80s stuff in there, with the requisite hits by Wang Chung, INXS, and Men Without Hats. There's '80s fashion and hairstyles, though I am a few years older than these kids are supposed to be, so the nostalgia didn't wash over me in a golden glow.

There are not a lot of laughs here. Fogler is terrible. Grace and Palmer make an appealing couple, with Palmer, though not a great actress, at least playing a role that seems to have written with more depth than the usual bimbo in parts like this. The film's message--that you have to take a chance with life--is represented by Grace climbing into a large metal ball and rolling down a hill. So, basically, to get your life started, pull a Jackass stunt.