DVD Reviews

Take Me Home Tonight – DVD Review

By June L. Aug 2, 2011, 14:27 GMT

Follow an aimless college grad who pursues his dream girl at a wild labor day weekend party. He his twin sister and their best friend struggle with their burgeoning adulthood over the course of the night. ...more

Nostalgia for the 1980’s is the driving force behind this film telling the story of one amazing night in 1988. High school friends who have been to college or out in the world since their graduation four years earlier come together for one last big party.

Sometimes a 21st Century sensibility can harm a film about another time. Some films have been able to overcome this obstacle allowing audiences to lose themselves to the story, either making it timeless or so true to its era there is no thought of modernity.

Take Me Home Tonight has some very good scenes and some excellent lines delivered by skilled actors. Best of all it is great to hear those tunes, especially the ones that hardly ever are played on oldies radio stations.

Ultimately, this film has the feeling that it is your Uncle Fred telling you the story, again, of the best night of partying ever…and the exaggerations that usually come with retelling of tales are the focus rather than any real human relationship story.

Topher Grace and Anna Faris are fun as the Franklin twins Matt and Wendy. Their scenes have a zest and energy that makes them seem more real than any of the other characters. Barry (Dan Fogler) their lifelong friend, gains audience sympathy at first, and we expect to see him improve and be noticed for his good qualities.

Instead he goes from awkward to idiotic and by the time the endless foolery of the party is in full swing, one wishes that he would simply disappear. The romance between Matt and his high school crush Tori Frederking (Teresa Palmer) has a sentimentality in spite of the free and easy attitudes they both try to adopt.

The whole film seemed confused, these characters were all supposed to be in their twenties and yet their emotional development is stalled at seventeen. It wasn’t funny, and for some life looks pretty bleak.
Take Me Home Tonight DVD is presented on single disc with a running time of 97 minutes. Special Features include a “Boom box” menu which will take you directly to each of the featured songs, a cast get together which is interesting.

There are seven deleted scenes, some of which appear to have been reworked and put into the finished film. There is a music video of Eddie Money’s song Take Me Home Tonight, and theatrical trailers.