Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) is in a bit of a rut. Having just graduated from MIT, he is now working at Suncoast Video since he can't decide what to do with his life. Who should walk into the store but his high-school crush, Tori (Teresa Palmer, I Am Number Four), a girl he speaks of all the time as the one who got away. Rather than let her know the truth, he pretends to be a customer and she recognizes him from high school. He lies about having a job at a powerful financial firm when she says she is in finance, and she says she hopes to see him at a party later that evening. Matt enlists his twin sister, Wendy (Anna Faris), and his best friend, Barry (Dan Fogler), who was fired from his job at an upscale import car dealership earlier that day, to help him pull off this grand façade. After stealing a brand new Mercedes convertible and finding a bag of coke in the glove box, the guys roll up to the party, hosted by Wendy's idiotic, but very wealthy, boyfriend, Kyle, who asks Wendy to marry him at the party. Matt impresses Tori and she and her hot friends invite him to her boss's party where surely they will know everyone. The lie picks up momentum and the coke fuels Barry's need to party to hilarious effect. Before Matt realizes what is happening, Tori is falling for him and she is in his arms, but a lie like that can't last forever, especially when Matt comes clean. Tori is understandably furious and it will take a bold and dangerous move on the part of Matt to try and win her back. Before the night is up, Matt and Barry will have an encounter with some none-too-pleased cops (one of whom is Matt's dad, Michael Biehn, The Terminator), Barry will have a bizarre sexual encounter with a coke-hungry beautiful redhead (Angie Everhart), and Matt will nearly be killed, but if he can win back Tori's affection and keep his sister from throwing her future away on a man who won't let her be herself, it will all be worth it.
I can't really say that the movie needs to be seen on Blu-ray, because visually, it didn't really beg for high-def, but it sounded great, considering the soundtrack, which is a plus. Special features included some deleted scenes, a roundtable with the cast who described their experiences making the film, the Music Boom Box, which included all of the songs from the film (although in snippets from the movie rather than in their entirety) and finally, my favorite, the Take Me Home Tonight music video. This could be named better since it is actually a video for Atomic Tom's remake of "Don't You Want Me Baby," but it is the cast imitating all of the iconic classic 80's movies and it was a blast to watch. Demetri Martin has a small role in the film as a former classmate of Matt's who is now a financial whiz in a wheelchair. He has a huge chip on his shoulder and is hysterical, especially in the deleted scenes where he was ad-libbing. Funny stuff. Dan Fogler stole the show, but Grace and Palmer had good chemistry and Faris was funny as always. Michelle Trachtenberg, Michael Ian Black and Bob Odenkirk also had small parts, although they didn't look their usual selves.
Take Me Home Tonight is a good time, especially for anyone who fondly remembers the 80's. It's full of great music, crazy fashion and fun characters and it reminded me of Can't Buy Me Love and The Night Before, all rolled into one. It's just a fun movie, altogether. It does have some sexual situations and drug use in it, so I don't recommend it for the whole family, but I enjoyed it.
