Take Me Home Tonight

So I had wanted to see this movie back when I first heard about it because it looked like a good time and Anna Faris is always great, oh and Topher Grace is super adorable. The movie actually took four years to be released apparently due to the heavy drug use in the movie. The movie ended up not doing so hot in the theaters, bringing in about $7 million total.

It's the 80's and is about a post-grad, Topher Grace, who comes home after college without knowing what to do with his life and starts working at a video store. He then sees his high school crush, Teresa Palmer, and soon embarks on a crazy scheme to win over her heart during the course of one night at a party from a mutual friend. He takes his twin sister, Anna Faris, and best friend, Dan Fogler, along for the ride.

The movie was definitely rated R with the sex and drugs, but it's as if the characters were still stuck in PG13. The story was obviously going to be a little cliched since this has been done before countless other times. With the sex/drugs, the plot did seem more believable, yet it was still a little far-fetched to have such life changing moments all culminating on one night. Besides the leads, the rest of the characters were horribly stereotypical.

The movie had a predictable 80's soundtrack but was still fun to hear. The proposal scene with Come on Eileen taking over the natural sound was probably my favorite part in the movie. The pace of the movie was fast and made it feel like these other one-night party movies instead of a character study, which is what I think Topher Grace was going for? It also didn't really capture the feel of the 80's, or what I can remember as a 5 year old that is. At least compared to movies of the time it felt like it was trying a little too hard.

There was not enough Anna Faris in this movie. I assume since it was filmed over four years ago, they obviously didn't know her awesomeness at the time. She gets much less screen time than the other three leads and mostly just sets up the other characters. Still, she does a good job with the amount of time she's given. That being said, there was too much of Dan Fogler in the movie. Sorry, I guess I'm just not a fan of this guy. I found his character obnoxious and wasn't interested in any of his scenes, and they were abundant. It's as if he was put in the movie to be the comic relief, but unfortunately he's not funny and the other characters were had enough subtle humor that the 'comic relief' was really unnecessary. Teresa Palmer did a nice job with this character that's been played a million different times by a million different actresses. She was like-able and genuine and played well off of Topher. Topher was Topher. I happen to like him, so I wasn't disappointed.

It's as if everyone was arguing about the direction to take the film and the end result was just a mishmash of different directions in the movie. It had some potential to be a better character driven witty movie, but it turned out more like a high-school comedy with a little R rating in there. It wasn't horrible, I was entertained throughout; largely in part from the three leads that I liked. "You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure that out".