I was looking forward to seeing Take Me Home Tonight, a one-night-of-oblivion movie set in the 80s that tanked in theaters earlier this year. I hadn't heard it was great or anything, but I kept hearing the Eddie Money song in my head (the chorus at least) like a clarion call. Sometimes my brain is weird.

The movie (story-wise) is probably what you'd expect. There are some really funny scenes, and then a few stretches of "I've seen this before, and I've seen it better." But what knocked me out of the picture almost immediately was its use of music and pop culture.

I think the movie is set in early summer of 1988. I say this because the main characters all graduated from high school in 1984, and they had, mostly, just graduated from college. Since I doubt all the very driven college kids would take an extra year to graduate (although this was pretty regular when I was in college...if not six or seven years), my math tells me it was set in 1988 (the actual year was not referenced, as I recall).

But, early on, "Kickstart My Heart" played as some of the characters drove really fast through somewhere in the vastness of Los Angeles. This Motley Crue song was on Dr. Feelgood, which came out in the fall of 1989.

The first scene is set in a mall record store, which had big album cover posters showing hit albums from the 80s. Not specific to 1988. No, they ranged all over the 80s, from Like A Virgin by Madonna (1984) to Guns N' Roses (which was time appropriate, as the debut album hit number one in the summer of 1988). Duran Duran (from Rio, 1982) was featured, and the characters acted like this was a great song they were still into.

And that Eddie Money song? Not even in the movie.

What am I bitching about? Pop culture (and music specifically, for the purposes of my rant) isn't instantly nostalgic. Sure, go to your ten year reunion, and you might pine a bit for the songs from high school. But these characters were living their lives in real time. In real time, pop culture keeps folding over and over as the new trumps the no longer hip.

Four years out of high school, I rarely, if ever, listened to any of the music I listened to in high school. It would take another five to ten years for me to get nostalgic for all that hair metal. In 1993 (four years after I graduated), I was listening to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Pixies (and many more from the alternative nation). I knew of none of these bands in 1989.

Real time pop culture isn't a pastiche of six to eight years. More like six to eight months.

Movies about reunions get a little more of a pass on stuff like this, if only because collapsing four years into one weekend is exactly what a reunion is all about (or that's what I hear; I always skip reunions). Hot Tub Time Machine (which I enjoyed more than Take Me Home Tonight in many, many ways) is sort of a reunion flick, but it has one huge, glaring pop culture screw up. And it's one of the funnier parts of the film. AND it involves Motley Crue (this time the anthem/ballad "Home Sweet Home"). What is it about Motley Crue that makes people forget when these songs came out?

I should have enjoyed Love and Other Drugs more than I did, what with all the nakedness of Anne Hathaway. But the careless use of 90s music (and other artifacts, like a cassette tape boom box) threw the whole film out of whack for me. Trust me, no one was listening to the Spin Doctors in 1996. On a cassette tape boom box. In a new electronics store. Especially anyone who considered themselves hip (as the main character purports himself). The Spin Doctors were spun out by 1994. Cassettes spooled out by the end of the 80s.

It's not that hard to be time specific, people. I know it's sometimes hard to get the song you want (No Doubt, a better pick for 1996, might still charge an arm and a leg), but there are so many songs that evoke the correct time (Elastica maybe?). This thing called the Internet has all the information at your fingertips. You just have to check.

Of course, I feel I'd be a great music supervisor for films. But there's no way to break into that business out here so far away from Los Angeles. So I just put together soundtracks for my brother's plays.

And even then, I screw up the timeline because of different requests from, say, the director. The play I'm putting a soundtrack together for currently ("Loot," opens in early September) is set in mid-60s London. And while Pink Floyd was part of the London scene at the time, the song we're using is from the 70s. Because it fits the theme.

The rest of the songs, however, are more reflective of Swinging London in the 60s.

Matt Worley is nostalgic for a time that never existed.