DVD Review: Take Me Home

STUDIO: Monterey | DIRECTOR: Sam Jaeger | CAST: Sam Jaeger, Victor Garber, Cristine Rose, Lin Shaye, Bree Turner, Amber Jaeger
DVD RELEASE DATE: 5/29/2012 | PRICE: DVD $26.95
BONUSES: two featurettes
SPECS: PG-13 | 97 min. | Romantic comedy | 1.77:1 widescreen | Dolby Digital 5.1

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

You know what none of us gets to do enough in this life? Fall in love.

Watching other people find themselves in each other can be nearly as much fun, though, as the 2011 independent film Take Me Home proves.

Amber and Sam Jaeger star in the romantic comedy Take Me Home.

A romantic comedy sprawled out from one coast to the other, Take Me Home follows fake New York cabbie Thom (really Thom—it’s a long story) and buttoned-up businesswoman Claire from their serendipitous meeting on a downtown street corner. A scattered, distressed Claire hates to fly and needs a ride to California to visit her estranged father in the hospital. And Dan (again, really Thom), having been recently evicted and at a dead-end in his artistic endeavors, just needs a payday. In fits and starts our couple move West toward their destination and, slowly but surely, toward each other.

Real-life marrieds Sam and Amber Jaeger play our Dan and Claire and maybe this is more than a little of what makes their connection resonate so sweetly on screen. But star Sam Jaeger (TV’s Parenthood) is also the film’s writer and director, dual roles that in no small part allowed him to shepherd this gently complicated love story to audiences in a way that makes Take Me Home feel oddly authentic.

There are missteps—a couple of scenes of dialogue in particular that have a strange sense of staginess to them. But these are bumps in an otherwise enjoyable road trip that boasts a winning couple fighting with—and falling for—each other amidst beautiful scenery and set to a surprisingly solid soundtrack (LA band Bootstraps provides the appropriately indie sounding songs in harmony with this thoroughly independent film). Heck, even the extras on this disc have a charming, DIY-vibe going for them, including an apology on the menu for the poor sound quality on two of the cast interviews, actor Victor Garber’s (The Entitled) being one.

Our hero Dan (really Thom, you know the drill by now) may not be what he purports to be at the outset, but Take Me Home is as true to its promotion as you could hope for: a romantic comedy bringing two lovely leads together in no particular hurry.

True love and truth in advertising? You can’t ask for more than that.

Buy or Rent Take Me Home
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