The problem with 1980s nostalgia movies

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:03:00 +0000

Contrary to popular belief, not all of us spent the '80s wang chunging. I understand how you might believe otherwise -- there's nothing like the passage of time to boil any period down to its most distinctive elements, and the '80s were certainly a bonanza of candy-colored, big-haired, Bartles & Jaymes-flavored bonbons. Yet when I see waves of nostalgia radiating from the movie "Take Me Home Tonight," aimed at a generation that wasn't even born when Tawny Kitaen was writhing on the hoods of cars, I can't help thinking how well that time was summed up by a character in last year's Oscar-overlooked "Hot Tub Time Machine": "We had Reagan and AIDS." It's true, kids, aside from Salt n' Pepa, a lot of it sucked.

You don't go to a movie named for an Eddie Money song looking for profound social commentary. I did, however, approach "Take Me Home Tonight," a Topher Grace- and Anna Faris-fueled comedy set in the Pleistocene era of 1988, with an instinctively personal perspective. Unfolding over the course of one action-packed summer night, the movie tells the tale of young people figuring out their futures and scoring with hot members of the opposite sex in a crazy world where phones still have cords. Matt Franklin, played by Grace, is a recent college graduate who finds himself living back at home and working at a Suncoast video, wondering if this adulthood thing is all it's cracked up to be.

Salon.com > Take Me Home Tonight

The problem with 1980s nostalgia movies