A film review by Craig J. Koban September 19, 2011 |
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TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT
Topher Grace: Matt / Anna Faris: Wendy / Dan Fogler: Barry / Teresa Palmer: Tori
Directed by Michael Dowse / Written by Dowse, Jackie Filgo and Jeff Filgo |
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Its makers
clearly have a fondness for the acid washed decade and all of
its nostalgia, but it never once shows in the final product.
The story rarely feels like a corporeal part of the 1980’s; it
has the era’s props, hairstyles, clothing, and time-specific music
choices blaring on the soundtrack, but the film’s otherwise pedestrian
and formulaic script could have just as well been set in the present.
If anything, TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT’s period aesthetic is more of a
lame gimmick than it is integral to the overall narrative. Perhaps it has something to do
with the fact that star Topher Grace was in TV’s THAT 70’S SHOW and
appears here as a producer; maybe he thought leap frogging a whole decade
from the small screen to the big would be both novel and appease fans of
his past sitcom. Perhaps he had a cultural love affair with the 80’s that he
needed to bring to the silver screen.
Perhaps he watched far better and more consequential period,
teen-centric comedies like AMERICAN
GRAFFITI and DAZED AND CONFUSED and thought that there was a
market for this genre to exploit in a decade largely unspoken for.
One thing is for certain: TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT seems almost
abstractly vague with its admiration of the 80’s, not to mention that
it’s tediously unfunny and mournfully predictable as a comedy.
Perhaps this is why the film languished on studio shelves for four
years (it was shot in 2007). People, no doubt, probably
fondly remember watching THE GRADUATE for the first time and found its
character’s existentialist, post-college/career fears and angst as
refreshingly unique. Yet,
it’s almost become a regurgitated cliché for so many countless movies
over the decades, and TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT is no exception.
This film's misguided twenty-something is Matt Franklin (Grace):
it's 1988 and he's a recent MIT graduate that is sort of melancholic and
aimless. He
does not know what he wants to do in life, despite spending several years
at one of the more prestigious American colleges.
While many of his Class of 1984 from Sherman High School have
prospered and went on to bigger and better things, Matt still lives at
home and slums away his work days at Suncoast Video, renting,
returning, and filing VHS movies (note to young readers: its what we used
to watch before DVD’s and Blu-Rays). Just when he believes that he has
hit absolute rock bottom, a former high school crush of his arrives at his
video store, Tori Fredreking (the fetchingly luminous Teresa Palmer,
exceedingly well cast as the object of Matt’s affection).
Matt is embarrassed to be seen as a Suncoast clerk, so – in a
very awkwardly handled scene – he takes off his name badge and vest,
sneaks outside, and returns to the store impersonating a customer.
Matt and Tori strike up an idle conversation, during which she
informs him that she has landed a job at an investment bank. Matt’s response, in order to impress her, is a lie:
he tells her that he works for Goldman Sachs, to which she responds that
Los Angeles does not have a G.S. office.
For reasons not adequately
relayed, Tori believes Matt’s cockamamie story and invites him to a
Labor Day party held by Kyle Masterson (Chris Pratt), who happens to be
the boyfriend of his sister, Wendy (a misused Anna Farris).
Matt agrees to attend, which means that he’s going to have to
pour on lie after lie to conceal the reality of his situation.
He comes to the assumption that he cannot be seen arriving at a
party in a junky auto that he drives, so he as his buddy Barry (Dan Fogler)
decide to steal a car from the dealership that Barry was fired from
earlier in the day (gee, I wonder if the hot sports car they drive will be
trashed near the end of the evening?).
Matt, Wendy, and Barry arrive at the party, during which Matt makes
every attempt possible to woe the girl of his adolescent dreams. TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT does not
have an original idea in its ambitionless screenplay: it’s like a
relative smorgasbord of witless and banal formulas.
We have a love story that’s scrapped from the bottom of the
barrel of some of the more forgettable John Hughes comedies, as well as
other conventions: the party the protagonist must attend that’s being
hosted by his enemy; the obligatory scenes of the partiers getting drunk
or high; the inebriated dance offs; the confrontations and obstacles that
the protagonist faces to win over the girl; the litany of more falsehoods
he dishes out to impress her; and of course the preordained moment when
she learns the truth – just after an intimate moment with him – where
she unceremoniously dumps him, after which he has to pull out all the
stops to win her back. In
this film’s case, it involves him engaging in an otherwise dangerous and
stupid party ritual know as “The Ball”, during which the hero screams out to
the onlookers, “I’ve been so afraid of my life that I’ve missed
it.” Lines like that are just
typical of the type of colorless and flat exchanges that are peppered all
through the film (supplied by Jackie and Jeff Filgo, who did work on THAT
70’S SHOW). Most of the time, the characters in the film engage in
expository heavy lines or speak to one another in ways wholly unnatural.
As a result, the characters become almost ill defined cardboard
cutouts trapped within the film’s period décor.
Even though some of the actors playing the parts are agreeable,
the people they inhabit are not. Matt, for example, is a timid and shy person, but it’s hard to
sympathize with him, let alone root for him him. Yet, the script pathetically works
overtime to get us to like him. The film is also…just not
particularly amusing, and some of its moments of debauchery seem force-fed
and desperate, as is the case with a sequence when Barry is caught in an
uncomfortable three-way with a middle-aged sexaholic and her creepy German
companion (it’s also not helped by the fact that Fogler is so incurably unfunny and
histrionic). Lastly, the film seems to lack a real identity: it either wants to be coming-of-age story, a nostalgic travelogue
picture, a crazy party night comedy, or an wrongful combination of all
three. TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT
is almost skitzo in this regard. As for what I liked?
Well, the retro, electronic-infused music soundtrack is – to take
a page out of the decade’s vernacular – totally rad.
Grace is an amiable and idiosyncratic performer that’s good at
blending broad comedic pratfalls with dramatic sincerity. Teresa Palmer is a radiant Aussie beauty that has a Rachel
McAdams-esque movie star smile and ethereal glow that’s hard not to be
taken in with. I also liked a
brief cameo by 80’s action star Michael Biehn that plays Matt’s LAPD
officer dad, who splashes a much needed dose of grounded humility to the
proceedings (although he occupies a totally unbelievable scene near the
film’s conclusion). Yet,
TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT is just a real poser. It’s an 80’s picture that
thinks it understands the milieu of the times, but its period trappings just
emerge as an
unnecessarily device and it’s characters are stilted marionette puppets to a mundane and lifeless script on autopilot.
Oh, and by the way, if your film is called TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT, could you at least have Eddie Money’s song of the same name in it!? What up with that? |
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