Hot Tub Time Machine Review: Blast From The Past

Comedy movies have had a rough go of it in the first quarter of 2010, with more critical flops and box-office disappointments being paraded in and promptly hurled out of theaters before anyone has had the chance to remember they’re supposed to laugh. The fact there isn’t anything remotely funny going on makes the average moviegoer (and reviewer) feel more like they’re the butt of the joke rather than being invited in on it. With such mind-numbing tripe as Cop Out, Valentine’s Day and, most recently, The Bounty Hunter attempting to stimulate our collective funny bone, one wonders if it’s really only been less than a year since I Love You, Man and, particularly, The Hangover shattered the glass ceiling of well-made, money-making, truly funny American comedies.

This weekend’s release of Hot Tub Time Machine is attempting to re-create the magic of last summer with a new bromantic raunch-fest your friends will likely start quoting before the house lights come up. Hot Tub is brazenly saturated with camp and eager to revel in the plausibility-stretching freedom its thin premise allows. Like 2006’s Snakes on a Plane, this movie’s title explains exactly what this movie’s about, which is exactly what it sounds like: a hot tub time machine. The added twist to the formula is the addition of retro nostalgia for anyone born before the fall of the Berlin Wall, as everything about the 80s able to be parodied is – from the tacky neon aesthetic to the unabashed use of illicit drugs and all the things Aqua Net could hold in between.

Our group of time travelers is led by Adam (John Cusak), a 40ish, recently dumped insurance salesman who hasn’t been keeping in touch with his back-in-the-day buddies. Poor man’s dog whisperer Nick (Craig Robinson) is hopelessly devoted to both his wife and his regret, and self-loathing loose cannon Lou (Rob Corddry, letting it rip) has refused to grow up. The three reconnect and decide to take a ski vacation in the same spot they frequented nearly a quarter-century ago (1986, to be exact) to rekindle the euphoric feelings of endless promise only reckless youth could provide. With Adam’s 20-something nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) along for the ride, the amigos discover Kodiak Valley has aged even worse than they have. With nothing left to do but kick back in the seedy ski lodge Jacuzzi with some brewskis, the foursome share some laughs and wake up the next morning in a dizzying homage to films of the 80s – most obviously Back to the Future and Cusak’s own Better Off Dead.

In fact, the attempts to satirize one of the most ridiculed decades in the 20^th century and its films sometimes came across as blatantly derivative and tired to me – I couldn’t decide if it was a winking tribute or simply lazy allegory as our heroes faced off with whiny ski slope tyrant Blaine (Blaine!), watched in horror as one yuppie coasted down the bunny hill with Gordon Gekko’s cell phone, and handled the awkward situation of Jacob running into his much-younger mother and discovering she’s a boozy floozy.

Still, watching the characters piece together their re-emergence in 1986 as they see people smoking indoors, Alf on television and such present-day wonders as a cassette-playing Walkman and leg warmers, made me chuckle and I’m on the younger end of those who can attach the references to actual memory. There was a row of teenage girls sitting behind me during the screening I went to, and I heard nary a peep of recognition from them regarding any of these now-archaic cultural stepping stones.

With such sight gags as these and Crispin Glover (George McFly himself) and Chevy Chase appearing as an ill-fated bellhop and mystical repairman, respectively, Hot Tub does hit its comic target regularly. However, the inevitable substance-reaching subtext of the buddies’ plight regarding their wrinkle in the space-time continuum drags the light-hearted farcical nature of the film into a maudlin feel-good tale of redemption – at least for a moment or two, until the next time Corddry drops his drawers or tosses his cookies.

I went in to Hot Tub Time Machine not expecting to be spoon-fed any hackneyed life lesson more successfully parlayed in the films from which it shamelessly borrows. What I expected even less was to wish some attempt at honest sentiment had been given as much attention as the balls-out ploy for laughs. Perhaps, then, the emotion would have felt less forced, more genuine – or at least believably existent – and complementary to the absurd humor. Its murky intent aside, Hot Tub Time Machine is a badly-needed shot of adrenaline into a flat-lining niche of the movie industry. Here’s hoping we won’t need to break out the defibrillator.

Overlay Photo by Photo: Rob McEwan