Take Me Home Tonight (2011)

Take Me Home Tonight's (2011) broadside poster on the subway platform announced itself about two weeks before the film's opening.  Personally, it doesn't take much to sell me on a sugary pop film, but from this poster I recognized three things that made it even more salable: 1980s style, Topher Grace and Anna Faris.  Two hilarious comic actors and one awesome decade?  A fine combination so far.  I found the trailer online and watched it.  No discernible story is apparent.  It is more like a montage of party shots with a comic male lead and a blonde female costar.  Still, it's vaguely recognizable as a romantic comedy.  Plus there's Eddie Money's 80s pop hit "Take Me Home Tonight" playing on the commercial soundtrack, so that's a big yes.  A vehicle to promote 80s culture driven by sheer nostalgia?   All systems are go, captain!  Color me sold.

But against expectations of it solely being sentimental sugar pop, Take Me Home Tonight is a playful trip back to 1987 that's a little wiser than its trailer leads on.  The movie doesn't mock the 1980s, insofar as you are able to portray what is perhaps the most made fun of decade in recent history.  Frosted pink lipstick has become a punchline in and of itself.  But that mocking tone is something you might especially expect a comedy to do, since easy laughs can be had just by showing any one of its characters' sartorial choice for, say, glam-rock shoulder padded outfits.  That tactic might be easy, but it's also cheap.  Instead, I'd say, Take Me Home Tonight is a period piece--a hazy one at times when you really wish the camera would sneak around and show us a detailed survey of all the little gadgets, accessories, furniture and old brand packaging specific to those many consecutive mornings in America--but an un-ironic period piece nonetheless.  It very earnestly sets us inside the 1980s without giving us that snicker that says, just look how silly we were.  It is not condescending.

And thank goodness it isn't.  It's about time we start to see this decade with fresh, fascinated eyes.  As we get further and further from the 1980s it seems like it's going to be easier to tease out the real look of this time without being facetious.  Had the romantic comedy plot of Take Me Home Tonight been firmer, it could have been 80s comedy kin to Zodiac's (2007) look at the 1970s.  The female lead Teresa Palmer, who plays Topher Grace's love interest, is unfairly matched against his marvelous wit, timing, and deft facial expressions, and looks deadpan by comparison, just as she does in the company of Anna Faris, who plays Topher Grace's twin sister.  Faris, in an almost auxiliary role, is miscast and underutilized by miles and would have been better suited for Palmer's spot.  But this, the over-scripted lines from comedian Michael Ian Black as a marshmallowy version of Patrick Bateman, and a few unfeasibly opportune plot incidents near the story's climax, are forgivable for Grace's comic lovability and the script's general funniness.  Oh, and of course, an amazing 80s soundtrack.  Eddie Money lives.