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Monday, March 14, 2011
MOVIE REVIEW
Take Me Home Tonight
Champagne Misgivings And 80s
Toilet-Papered Dreams
The morning after: Topher Grace as Matt and Dan Fogler as Barry in Michael
Dowse's 1980s comedy
"Take Me Home Tonight" .
Rogue
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Monday,
March 14, 2011
There's no A-ha or David Bowie or Rockwell on the soundtrack, but "Take Me Home
Tonight" is effortless at recreating the 1980s without the nudge-nudge wink-wink
of the era. Messy, silly and occasionally uproarious, Michael Dowse's
comedy is a blend of foolish, hapless characters who try to find their bearings
after graduating from college.
Based on a story written by the film's star Topher Grace and Jeff and Jackie
Filgo, "Take Me Home" focuses more or less on one wild night of partying in Los
Angeles in the late summer of 1988. Matt (Mr. Grace) is fresh out of
M.I.T. An underachiever, he takes a job at Suncoast video, more as an act
of rebellion, or out of fear that he doesn't want to let his innocence fly too
quickly out of the back door. The perfect enabler for Matt's inner child
is Barry (Dan Fogler), a best friend who's just been canned from his car
salesman job.
Underperformers unite.
While a chance meeting with Matt's high school crush Tori (Teresa Palmer) stops
the juvenile traffic in Matt's heart and forces him to re-evaluate where he is,
Barry knows no limits. As played by Mr. Fogler, Barry is one of the
kindred spirits that the late John Belushi's "Animal House" character would have
welcomed with open arms. Mr. Fogler is the singular reason to see this
farcical, frantic folly.
On the other hand, half of the film, especially the Tori character, is woefully
underwritten. Tori has a good heart, but is made to look as if all she
cares about is the status Matt has, or that she'd entertain sleeping with him if
he drove a great car. Are there a few women in the world who only
intermingle with high rollers? Of course, but the way her character is
drawn, you'd think she was a plastic, gold-digging weathervane, or something of
that bizarre sort.
Anna Faris plays Wendy, Matt's twin sister, who is trying to make her own dreams
come true with a scholarship to Oxford. She has a sappy mug of a boyfriend
who appears well-meaning but harbors his own feelings of inadequacy that may
interfere with her future. Barry meets older women who have grown up and
seen the other side of life and probably realize that their own dreams have long
been quashed.
The best aspect of "Take Me Home Tonight" is its art direction. Those VHS
cassette boxes, neatly shelved bring back a collage of memories -- of being in a
world where every Tuesday you would hunger to gobble up the newest of new
releases, no matter what they were. That resplendence is precisely the
feeling that coursed through me as I watched Mr. Dowse's film. The fresh,
colorful, unselfconscious era of exploration and possibility, smacked squarely
with the reality that, as in life, some of those new releases weren't that good.
This kind of euphoria mixed with the come-down evokes a drug rush high -- not
that I'd have specific knowledge -- but when you taste the sweetness sugar
brings, you know you will have to pay for its after-effects sooner or later.
More than anything, this is the spirit "Take Me Home Tonight" evokes. If
you enjoyed the 1980s for the memories of freshness, of that exciting, coming of
age and all-out self-indulgence -- mixed with the harsh realities of the Reagan
years that polluted your ideals and adolescent aspirations (the film gently
hints at those moments) -- then you will likely smile at this film, which is,
for all its flaws including its overpopulation of characters, a funny, mindless
romp.
With: Chris Pratt, Michelle Trachtenberg, Lucy Punch, Michael Ian Black, Demetri
Martin.
"Take Me Home Tonight" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America
for language, sexual content and drug use. The film's running time is one hour and
37 minutes.
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