Take Me Home Tonight is about Matt (Grace; That 70′s Show) a MIT grad who is now working at a video store in the mall who’s high school crush, Tori (Palmer; I Am Number Four) returns to town.  He’s obsessed to try and ask her out this time around.  Meanwhile his sister (Faris; The House Bunny) is worried about getting into grad school and moving in with her boyfriend (Pratt; Parks & Recreation) and his best friend (Fogler; Fanboys) just lost his job.  All of this takes place against the backdrop of 1980′s Los Angeles.

Take Me Home Tonight lies strongly in the “one wild night” genre of movie, which is a favorite of mine, although all the stories tend to be a lot alike.  I honestly didn’t expect much from it at all.  It seemed like a pretty bad movie based on advertising.  But it started to win me over when it started with the Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star”.

It’s packed with great 80′s songs like that, so if you like 80′s music it’s got a pretty killer soundtrack.  Which was a welcome addition.  Oddly though there really was no reason for this movie to take place in the 80′s besides to give it that soundtrack.  They didn’t even dwell on the time period at all.  It’s not used for any gags or jokes at all (which is appreciated as it would have been easy to make some bad 80′s jokes).

I liked that this movie was more about adult stories.  It wasn’t about teenagers, these were grown-ups trying to figure out what being an adult means.  And that puts a sad undertone to the whole movie, which isn’t a bad thing at all.  I will say though that this is by no means a barrel of laughs.  It’s also not solidly in the drama category, but a nice happy medium.

Michelle Trachtenberg in goth mode.

Besides a fairly strong script, the thing that makes this a good movie is the cast.  Teresa Palmer is great as the dream girl.  And one of the things I enjoyed most was Anna Faris in a more serious role.  She’s not doing slapstick here.  In fact her role is almost entirely serious.  And she is really good at it.  Dan Fogler pretty much plays the same character that he usually does so that was kind of disappointing.  But there’s a great little cameo by Michelle Trachtenberg as a goth chick that’s really enjoyable for fans of her.

The movie does suffer from a lot of the cliches of this type of movie, but does a good job of also standing out in numerous areas.  Overall I’d recommend it.

It’s available on Blu-ray and DVD on July 19th: