Dear Hollywood,
You little bitch.
I'm sure you were expecting me to write a typical, ordinary, blah-blah-blah review of your latest — what should we call it? Effort? Hardly. Take Me Home Tonight is not an abomination for what it is, it's an abomination for what it believes itself to be: worthwhile in any way. Sitting through yet another tedious release guided by your sycophantic number crunchers was more of an effort than that spent to make this trash.
Let me to take a step back for a moment. I'm certain that a majority of the cast and crew of this '80s knockoff worked quite hard, and more power to them. After all, even the nastiest of whores needs the work. But Take Me Home Tonight isn't worthy of the actors (Topher Grace, Anna Faris, Dan Fogler, et al) hired to spew vapid dialogue designed only to cash in on the current hot cliches at the multiplex. Fifteen cold, lifeless minutes into this John Hughes-esque, dead-dick sucking failure, I heard a conversation dancing around the dusty cobwebs of my bored little brain. It was the possible transcript for how this waste of film came to be:
Richards: “Johnson, we need some quick cash. What can you get me cheap and easy? And really blow me away this time, Johnson.”
Johnson: “Anything you say, sir. I'm pretty sure we can get the rights to a slew of tired '80s songs for a soundtrack. Maybe we can just make a movie out of those? I can make it happen!”
Richards: “Genius! Make sure it's all the old songs the kids are into these days, and get it done for me quick!”
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2011.