Directed by Michael Dowse. Starring Topher Grace, Anna Faris, Dan Fogler, Teresa Palmer, Chris Pratt, Michael Biehn 16 cert, gen release, 97 min

LIKE A VIRGINis in the shops, NWA is on the stereo and yuppies roam the earth. It's not just a backdrop: Take Me Home Tonightreally, really wants to a 1980s movie.

Look here: Topher Grace is peering over his sunglasses in a direct curtsey to Risky Business; look there and he and two chums are stealing a car just like the central triumvirate of Ferris Bueller's Day Offonce did.

When Michael Dowse's film isn't paying direct homage, it's still doing cut-price John Hughes. Would it surprise you to learn that, like the similarly minded Adventureland, the hero (Grace) of the film is an MIT graduate working in a video store until he can figure out what he wants to do with his life? Would you be amazed to discover that the film starts with a house party and ends with another house party?

Behind the big hair and glittery rah-rah skirts, there’s not a lot to mull over. Set mostly around one wild and crazy evening, this lacklustre comedy charts its protagonist’s efforts to win over his former high-school crush (Teresa Palmer). Sure enough, he seduces the cheerleader-turned-financier with tall tales of working with currencies in Goldman Sacs, but will his conscience get the better of him?

Elsewhere, his twin sister (Anna Faris) must choose between marriage and grad school while the siblings’ party animal friend (Dan Fogler) gets into scrapes and shenanigans, most of which may be viewed in the trailer at no cost.

Unlike the milieu it seeks to emulate, Take Me Home Tonightnever makes us care about its characters and their respective fates. Grace's smooth-haired wholesomeness ensures period authenticity, but his personal crisis is de-prioritised in favour of more shots of rolled-up sleeves. Fogler and Faris are equally wasted in a project that's Just Not Funny Enough. Without the Spielbergian or Hughesian heart, token gestures toward poignancy play as intolerable longueurs.

By the end, we're still not ready to forgive Hot Tub Time Machinefor all its pointless 1980s porn, but we are yearning for the comparative delights of The Wedding Singer.