Review of Take Me Home Tonight (2011) by Shiira — 14 Mar 2011

Lloyd Dobler had nothing going for him. He was a mediocre student with no apparent college plans. As for a career, don't ask: Lloyd wanted to be a kickboxer. And to boot, the slacker had this nervous talking habit where he'd be liable to say anything, and did, much to the befuddlement of his listeners.

Lloyd seemed to have no future, a likely candidate to work at a video rental store or some other dead-end job, but still he somehow nabbed Diane Court, the school valedictorian, no less. Alas, that's the movies for you; the movies being primarily a patriarchal construct in which the guy always gets the girl, no matter how dubious his credentials may be.

"Take Me Home Tonight", set one year before the popular Cameron Crowe film, which set hearts a flutter with its indelible boombox scene, is just the latest example of this popular male fantasy, the myth that love conquers all boundaries, and as a result, gives false hope to underachievers worldwide.

Matt Franklin(Topher Grace) is a clerk, but he's no ordinary clerk: the Suncoast Video employee keeps a diploma from M.I.T. tucked away in his back pocket, and is taking his own sweet time in cashing it in, much to the chagrin of his cop father who footed the considerable bill.

Two years out of college, Matt's post-graduate blues is reaching epidemic proportions, a rut that just turned official. And then, in the nick of time, Matt has a "Casablanca" moment, the kick in the pants he sorely needs to get himself motivated.

It's a girl. It's always a girl. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in the 1942 Michael Curtiz film: "Of all the video stores, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine." It's Tori Fredkering(Teresa Palmer), in the flesh, the girl he rightfully diagnosed as being out of his league when they were both in high school.

And unfortunately, is still out of his league, although it didn't have to be that way. Embarrassed by his job, Matt pretends to be a customer and tells Tori he works at Goldman Sachs, which would make him, in his estimation, worthy of her company.

She invites him to a party, and if you don't like parties, "Take Me Home Tonight" will try your patience, especially if you're not a fan of eighties-era musical acts such as Men Without Hats("The Safety Dance") and Dexy's Midnight Runners("C'mon Eileen"), because the time they spend at the post-graduate kegger takes on an "Exterminating Angel(-esque)"-like length.

Like the guests in the 1962 Luis Bunuel head-scratcher, the moviegoer wonders if Matt and Tori will ever leave. But if you're a fan of the milieu, the stay isn't an unwelcome one, even if the musical choices are wholly unadventurous and reduces the decade into cheesiness( whereas Crowe used the amazing Paul Westerberg-penned curio "Within Your Reach" in his 1989 classic).

On what is undoubtedly the greatest night of this video clerk's life, Matt sees the inherent tragedy of his failure to launch, as he tastes life for the first time, which would be a fleeting glimpse in the real world, because in the real world, there are consequences for procrastination and fibs.

Tori Fredreking likes Matt as a Goldman Sachs associate. But he's not a securities broker. He wears a name tag. In "Say Anything", the gap between Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court seemed too implausibly wide, due to the close proximity of their then-prevailing milieu(great Peter Gabirel song notwithstanding), whereas Matt and Tori, far-removed from the social hierarchy of high school that made such a unlikely pairing the stuff of teen romantic comedies, is a coupling which the moviegoer could buy.

What the moviegoer can't buy, however, concerns Matt's lie about his current employer. Under false pretenses, Tori has sex with him. Feeling soiled and used upon discovering the truth, she grants him a mulligan, on the basis, by all appearances, of his ability to ride the "ball" down a steep hill without dying.

That's the male fantasy at work. An act that insipid wouldn't work in the real world. The man encounters no repercussions for his dishonesty. Give Lloyd some credit. In front of Diane's father and his father's friends, he tells them the truth, not some bulls*it about wanting to start his own business or practicing law.

"Kickboxing is the sport of the future," he proudly declares, and for all we know, that's what he became.