‘Take Me Home Tonight’ (2011) Review

Take Me Home Tonight Synopsis: Four years after graduation, an awkward high school genius uses his sister’s boyfriend’s Labor Day party as the perfect opportunity to make his move on his high school crush.

MIT graduate Matt Campbell (Topher Grace) is at a crossroads in his life. Despite his impressive degree, he’s working at a video store in the mall and still lives at home with his parents and twin sister, Wendy (Anna Faris). When his high school crush Tori (Teresa Palmer) walks into the video store, Matt concocts a lie about working for Goldman Sachs to impress her, and Tori invites Matt to an end-of-summer party in Los Angeles hosted by Kyle Masterson (Chris Pratt), who just so happens to be Wendy’s boyfriend.

Determined to find direction in his life and win the girl of his dreams, Matt attends the party and embarks on a rather wild night through Los Angeles with Tori and his best friend Barry (Dan Fogler).

Take Me Home Tonight is more or less a love letter to 80’s film nostalgia. It does its best to invoke John Hughes but doesn’t quite succeed. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve some credit for trying. The story of the aimless college grad with the disappointed father and his gorgeous crush is nothing new. Matt’s arc is pretty typical for this kind of movie. He’s a nice guy. He is handsome, intelligent, and unable to meet his potential. At Kyle’s party, he’s surrounded by 80s clichés.

Tori is the pretty prom queen dealing with her own post-college doubts now that she’s unhappily working at an investment firm with creepy men who want to hit on her. Barry is the loud, sometimes obnoxious best friend who gets fired and decides to try coke for the first time to cheer himself up. Wendy is a talented writer who wants more for herself while trying to justify staying with Kyle, a rich boy jock who has never moved on from high school and seems to think Wendy’s future is being his wife and popping out his kids.

Other minor characters fit certain stereotypes. The stoner. The goth girl. The snarky asshole who actually works at Goldman Sachs and knows Matt is full of it. None of these characters are original, and only a few are funny and worth watching. That being said, Take Me Home Tonight also has a great 80’s aesthetic, complete with the bright clothes, synth, and a soundtrack of the era’s greatest hits.

Topher Grace is a decent leading man who excels at playing the nice guy with a deadpan charm that somehow works. He and Teresa Palmer have some pretty nice chemistry. Take Me Home Tonight does a reasonably decent job of giving Tori a personality rather than just turning her into the pretty love interest who is there to fulfill the fantasy of our hero. Wendy and Kyle have a subplot of their own. They’re about to move in together, and of course, Kyle proposes.

But Wendy could be going to Cambridge for grad school to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, and Kyle is not supportive. He’s a typical dick, and you can see this relationship’s ending from the moment we meet him. Wendy seems like a smart young woman with her whole future ahead of her, so I could not understand her interest in doofy Kyle. Barry… well, Barry wants to have a good time after getting fired from his job at a car dealership. He gets high, he gets laid, and he yells a lot. There’s not much else going on there. Fogler is amusing, at least… mostly.

The script borrows from plenty of other coming-of-age comedies in the genre, but some humor and character development fall flat. There were enough laugh-out-loud moments that I was willing to forgive the otherwise lazy storytelling. Frankly, the best part of Take Me Home Tonight was watching Matt chase after the object of his high school affection. There is something about the “nerdy guy wins the prom queen” trope that I find endearing, assuming both characters have enough likability and charisma to pull it off. Thankfully, Grace and Palmer do.

Take Me Home Tonight is not a romantic comedy I will probably watch again, but it’s worth viewing, especially if you love 80s nostalgia and throwbacks to John Hughes.

Watched: 07/12/2019
Notable Song: Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes