Review of Take Me Home Tonight (2011) by Rafael L — 19 Aug 2011

As thin as plots come. So when an MIT graduate in need of direction runs into his unrequited high school crush while he's working at a video store, he pretends that he doesn't work there and invents a more impressive occupation on the fly.

They go to a big party that night and 80's wackiness ensues from there. There is barely enough here for a twenty-minute episode of a sitcom, never mind a feature length film. This has actually been sitting on the shelf since 2007 (always a tell-tale sign), and you can see why they were hesitant to release it; it's really trite, and has been overdone to death by other movies.

There's nothing wrong with doing a blast-from-the-past comedy, but you can't write all unlikable characters and there's gotta be at least something engaging to work with. I like Topher Grace; I think he does showcase comedic timing abilities, he just doesn't have the star power or the chops to lead a movie.

While I did get the occasional chuckle from him, I got twice the amount of eye rolls from Dan Fogler, who really wears out his welcome as soon as he gets on screen, being the stereotypical obnoxious fat guy.

The only thing that this movie really gets by on is its soundtrack, as jutting as it may be; there's a lot of music that I personally enjoy, but that's not enough to make a movie out of it. Everything in here feels like padding to stretch the runtime to over the 90-minute mark; you could remove the entire Anna Faris subplot completely and it would make no difference to the rest of the story.

There's really no reason to watch this unless you have absolutely nothing else to do.