Grace carries ‘Take Me Home Tonight’ nicely
Take Me Home Tonight
(Cert 15, 97 mins, Comedy/Romance)
Matt (Topher Grace) has recently graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and should be clambering up the corporate ladder.
Instead, he lacks direction and bides his time with a thankless job in a video store, to the chagrin of his police officer father (Michael Biehn).
In the midst of his ennui, Matt encounters childhood crush Tori Frederking (Teresa Palmer) and in a moment of panic, he tries to impress her by pretending to be a banker with Goldman Sachs.
They meet up later that night at a party thrown by Kyle (Chris Pratt), boyfriend of Matt’s twin sister Wendy (Anna Faris), and Matt struggles to keep up the pretence.
Take Me Home Tonight is a sweet yet exceedingly slight tale of unrequited love and narcotic excess set in 1988.
The script, co-written by Jackie Filgo and Jeff Filgo, unfolds largely over the course of one eventful night at a house party where the boozy protagonists lose their inhibitions and in some cases, their dignity.
Director Michael Dowse stretches out the party, which would amount to a brief interlude in any other coming-of-age story, to the best part of an hour, punctuated with gross-out humour.
Grace is an endearing hero and he shares sparky screen chemistry with Faris as his feisty sibling.
Dan Fogler is surplus to requirements, demoted to the butt of the bad taste jokes so Grace’s insecure hero never loses his sheen of wholesomeness.
The soundtrack is a glorious step back in time, opening with the unmistakable electronic beat of The Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star.
Rating: 3/5.
