Luke Warm Time Machine
“Hot Tub Time Machine” (2.5 stars out of 5)
Director Steve Pink’s (“Accepted”) latest film, “Hot Tub Time Machine” features a story about which the title directly implies. Three best friends try recapturing the fun they used to have by taking an impromptu trip to an old ski lodge that they used to frequent as teens. John Cusack is the most bankable star, the rest of the cast fills out with Craig Robinson, (Darryl from TV’s “The Office”) Rob Corddry, (“The Daily Show”) and relative newbie Clark Duke as Cusack’s twenty-something nephew who comes along just to get him out of the basement of Cusack’s house. There are also appearances from former 80s icons Crispin Glover (“Back to the Future”) Chevy Chase (“National Lampoon’s Vacation”) and William Zabka (“The Karate Kid”). “Hot Tub Time Machine” is a movie that could have been worse, but should have been better.
Cusack plays Adam, an insurance agent who comes home one evening to find that his girl has moved out and taken all of her stuff with her. His sister’s kid is living in his basement, where he spends his days cloaked in darkness playing “Second Life” on his lap top. Nick (Robinson) used to be the lead singer for a band but now spends his days working at a dog salon named “Wuz Up Dawg?”where he grooms the pups among other not as sanitary duties. Finally, there’s Lou who he has problems with alcohol and he’s just been through a messy divorce. It’s Lou that prompts the trio to plan their trip. He arrives home one night and tries to commit suicide in his garage. Once Adam and Nick visit their friend in the hospital they decide that it’s time the three of them to get out, forget about their mundane lives, and try to have the type of fun they used to have all those years ago. Not wanting to leave his nephew at home, Adam takes Jacob along for the ride.
The ski town has been hit by hard economic times during the last twenty years. A pizza joint they frequented is boarded up. Their hotel is a shadow of its former self looking more like a sleazy motel than the hip and happening ski lodge that they were expecting. Even their old room that seemed awesome when they were younger leaves something to be desired. Disappointed, the friends decide to cut their losses, open some beers and take a load off in the hot tub that came with their room. While drinking, one of them knocks over an aluminum can into the hot tub’s mechanism. The can had some liquid left in it that shorts out the electronics. When they awake the next morning, they’ve gone back in time to 1986.
That’s pretty much the gist of the plot, and from a movie named “Hot Tub Time Machine,” you can’t expect much more than that. The guys collectively decide not to touch anything in the past because of The Butterfly Effect. However, they quickly realize that their lives in the future suck so if they could change things in the past to work out for the better, then why not? Except that Jacob thinks if they change too much, than he might not even be born! So we’ve got a film about three guys trying not to become themselves, and one kid just trying to become anything! I was truly hoping the humor would be dumber a la “Anchorman”. Rather, it’s fairly raunchy with a dash of nudity and much more drug use and reference than I like to see in my movies. Instead of “Anchorman” think: “The Hangover” meets “Back to the Future” meets “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle”.
There is plenty here to laugh at, if you’re into this type of, beer drinking, drug induced, nudity filled rumpus. Had it come out when I was twelve years younger, my review might be totally different. As it is, I thought “Hot Tub” would be more “Airplane” but it turned out more like “American Pie”. Unfortunately for Cusack and the gang, movies like “Hot Tub” have been done before and came out better. You could do worse with your time (“Alexander”, “The Avengers”, “The New World”, “The Brothers Grimm” just to name a few…) but there’s no reason to spend $20 at the movies when you subscribe to Netflix for half of that fee per month.
