Like a pop-culture countdown on MTV, there's a checklist of ingredients you expect from a comedy about the '80s. It starts with a clean-cut white guy who has a useless college degree, a dead-end job at the mall and a lingering crush on a beauty from high school. Add a wild-and-crazy sidekick. Sprinkle some illicit drugs. Then shake it up in a hot car playing a soundtrack of synth-pop tunes from John Hughes movies.

"Take Me Home Tonight" hits most of the markers of a flashback film but not enough of the beats. A lot of effort went into crafting the day-glo details surrounding the likable hero, yet the indifferently directed script is lost in the twilight zone between satire and sincerity.

Sincerity is like a name tag for Matt Franklin (Topher Grace in early John Cusack mode), who works at a video store instead of finding a job with his engineering degree. When he bumps into his old crush Tori Frederking (Teresa Palmer, who looks uncannily like Kristen Stewart with a smile), they agree to meet later at a bash held by Kyle Masterson (scene-stealer Chris Pratt), the shallow preppy boyfriend of Matt's twin sister Wendy (Anna Faris, surprisingly underutilized).

Seven years earlier, Matt had shared but squandered a moment alone with Tori, and his blowhard friend Barry (Dan Fogler) thinks this is a chance to make amends. Barry steals a Mercedes so Matt can convince Tori that he's a Wall Street hotshot. And say hello to my little friend — a bag of cocaine is in the glove compartment.

There's hardly a single surprise in "Take Me Home Tonight," from a moonlight heart-to-heart when Tori and Matt get a moment alone to an automotive mishap when he and Barry flee from trouble.

The familiarity is part of its charm, but this is one of those movies that wants so badly to be an iconic odyssey about the craziest night ever that all the eccentric edges are sanded away. It pretends to be hungry like the wolf, yet it ends up doing the safety dance.

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What "Take Me Home Tonight" • Two and a half stars (out of four) • Rating R • Run time 1:38 • Content Strong language, partial nudity and drug use