If Ferris Bueller’s Day Off got really drunk and fell into bed with Less Than Zero, their fetal-alcohol-syndrome-afflicted offspring might be Take Me Home Tonight, a movie that aims to be to the 80s what Dazed and Confused was to the 70s. And after all, it’s high time: Michael Douglas has already revisited Wall Street.

Take Me Home Tonight takes place in LA and Beverly Hills and hits all the era’s tags—RayBans, pastel popped-collar polos, pushed-up jacket sleeves, Preppie bow ties vs. New Wave skinny ties, frizzbomb perms for girls and spiked mullets or Gordon Gecko mousse-backs for guys, video stores, red sports cars, cocaine, wild house parties, evil bankers, and, of course, a sinister and sexually perverted fat German businessman in shoulder-padded black leather. Wouldn’t be an 80s movie without one of those.

The story, one of those “guy grows up in the course of one wild and crazy night” deals, hits all the plot buttons too. Our too-straight hero manages to finally bust loose and somehow to fulfill both his parents’ expectations and the anarchic instincts of the loser sociopathic guy who’s inexplicably his best friend. It goes without saying that he gets the girl too.

There are fibs and other deceptions, grand theft auto, cocaine abuse, dance-offs, police encounters, light sadomasochism, youthful irresponsibility and more. It’s all pretty silly and not to be taken seriously. There are absolutely no consequences for stealing the expensive sports car, bankers are prima facie arrogant and evil, and the moment of  moral triumph comes when Tori decides to quit her banking job, because, of course, she hates it. Believe me, I’m no fan of the banking industry (see last paragraphs), but most of these ideas are simply juvenile.

Topher Grace recently went on a mini-city tour to promote his upcoming film, Take Me Home Tonight. Look for our review on Friday. In the meantime, we had the opportunity to sit down with Topher and talk about the film, which takes place in the eighties.

Synopsis: As the summer of 1988 winds down, three friends on the verge of adulthood attend an out-of-control party in celebration of their last night of unbridled youth.

The Flickcast: You are not a product of the eighties, so how did you come to do a movie about the eighties?  I know this was kind of your project. You helped conceptualize and produce the film, and acted  in it as well.

Topher Grace: I grew up watching Dazed and Confused, which was made in the nineties, but it was about the seventies. There’s also a movie made in the seventies, which was about the fifties, it was American Graffiti. We thought, ” This generation doesn’t have that kind of movie.”

There will be another movie about the nineties in about 10 years. Right now, no one has done this for the eighties. We’ve had movies that came out closer to the eighties, like The Wedding Singer, which I love, but which makes fun of the eighties, or spoofs it.

To be honest, you couldn’t really do that movie about the nineties yet. You need about twenty years in order to look back the same way George Lucas did or Richard  Linklater did with those other two movies. Right now if we tried to do a nineties one, it would probably be grunge, and those big jackets-you could figure some stuff out, but I think it would be more like The Wedding Singer.