'Take Me Home Tonight'

Michael Dowse’s new film “Take Me Home Tonight” centers around Matt Franklin (Topher Grace), a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who happens to be great at math, but not so great at deciding what he wants to do with his future. Matt, his twin sister Wendy (Anna Faris), and his best friend Barry (Dan Fogler) attend a wild Labor Day party in 1988 suburban California that changes the course of their lives, and sets Matt on a journey to course correct his aimless existence.

True to its setting, the movie is one big ’80s party, appropriately filled with drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Within this environment, “Take Me Home Tonight” effectively mixes subgenres, combining vulgar humor and more traditional comedy to attract, rather than alienate, its target audiences. Thus, for each penis joke or botched sexual encounter, there is a corresponding element of more sophisticated wit.

The film is also part romantic comedy. The plot is a familiar one: boy chases after unattainable girl and lies to impress her. She likes him. Then he tells the truth. She doesn’t like him. He proves himself. She likes him again. In other words, the storyline—like that of many pop romance flicks—is more functional than original. As such, for “Take Me Home Tonight,” it is the winning acting of the leads and secondary cast which sustains the film and enables it to transcend its tropes.

Topher Grace’s character of the gifted but meandering Matt Franklin is not particularly novel. As with his most famous role of Eric Forman in “That ’70s Show,” he is again cast as a loser who eventually gains self-respect, and with it, coolness. It’s not a groundbreaking arc, but it works perfectly for Grace, whose slightly awkward disposition makes all of his characters believable. Opposite Grace, relative newcomer Teresa Palmer plays Tori Frederking, Matt’s love interest. She is well suited to the role of the beautiful, out-of-your-league girl who ends up becoming relatable after all. Once again, the character arc is fairly textbook, but Palmer sells it.

The two romantic leads are buoyed by a superb secondary cast. In her portrayal of Wendy, Matt’s twin, Faris demonstrates a side of her acting repertoire that few audiences have seen. Playing against type, Faris gives a serious—and at points even heartbreaking— performance, and thereby demonstrates that she has a far greater dramatic range than one might expect from her prior work. Similarly impressive is Fogler, whose hysterical antics as Matt’s wingman Barry light up the film. Fogler nails the role of the quirky, overweight best friend, and at times evokes the best of “Superbad.” Throughout the film, he offers no moral guidance; his sole purpose is to encourage Matt to do stupid things, and his persistently terrible decisions—from car theft to snorting cocaine while driving—prove consistently entertaining.

While “Take Me Home Tonight” won’t win any Academy Awards, it’s probably one of the more entertaining movies of 2011 thus far, despite its formulaic elements. A large part of the movie’s value comes from the relatability of its plot, which focuses primarily on the unsettling uncertainty that plagues everyone from college graduates to anyone moving on to a new stage in their lives.

The film’s prescribed cure for this existential angst is choice—taking a leap of faith into the life’s next stage and hoping for the best—and refusal to make this choice is the greatest sin that the movie’s characters can commit. Thus, when Matt apologizes to his father for being a failure, his father responds, “no, you’re worse than a failure. You’re worse than a failure because you didn’t even try.” The film is filled with poignant moments that call for its characters to take risks and face their fears about the future, a situation to which many viewers can easily relate.

By grounding itself in an effectively conveyed life lesson rather than forgettable punchlines, “Take Me Home Tonight” elevates itself beyond the stockpile of cliches out of which it is constructed.