Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Review:

Like “Snakes on a Plane” (2006) and “Citizen Kane” (1941) before it, “Hot Tub Time Machine” delivers exactly what the title promises. It’s a zany comedy that tries to be no holds bar but doesn’t quite succeed on the level I wanted it to succeed. Yes, it’s actually pretty funny. I found myself laughing a good deal. But at the end of the day, it felt a little underdeveloped. Perhaps the best part of this movie is in fact the title. The second best part would probably be the fact that someone thought up the rediculous concept of a hot tub time machine. But really, when you think about it, why is a hot tub time machine more ridiculous than a DeLorean time machine? Actually, who am I kidding? It’s way more ridiculous.

So on to the story. Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Webber) and Lou (Rob Corddry) in the 1980s were best friends partying it up at the hottest ski lodge ever. In their adult lives they have drifted apart and become unhappy, unsuccessful bores. Adam is a down and out insurance salesman. Nick has given up his dreams of becoming a famous musician to work at a salon for dogs and Lou has become an alcoholic divorcee. One night during a drunken rock out in his garage, Lou accidentally gives himself carbon monoxide poisoning. Thinking this was a suicide attempt, his doctor’s recommend that Adam and Nick keep an eye on Lou. And so, Adam, Nick, and Lou, accompanied by Adam’s dorky nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) head back up to that ski lodge from their lost youth to bond and cheer each other up. When they arrive though they find that the lodge has not been kept up over the years. It is a musty old place with a one armed bellboy. Even the hot tub has a dead opossum in it.

But nevertheless, the four men decide to get plastered in the hot tub and as tends to happen when you get drunk in a hot tub, they get transported back in time. And so begins the age old foibles of time travel. They realize they cannot alter anything; They must break up with the same girls they broke up with in the past, they must get into the same fights, the same hook ups. But this of course turns out to be a hard roster to follow, especially since Adam, Nick, and Lou know how their lives turn out if they relive their past in the same way.

Some of the ensuing hilarity is purely excellent. I especially liked Nick’s inappropriate phone call to his nine-year old wife. But some of scenarios and jokes didn’t quite work for me. In a movie called “Hot Tub Time Machine” you should be going for broke. There should be nothing redemptive or reassuring about the situation. That’s why I like the movies “Caddyshack” (1980) and “Stripes” (1982) which are in a similar spirit as “Hot Tub” but never move to restore the lives of their characters.

In “Hot Tub,” which is a movie rife with cursing, drugs, sex, and delusions, I wish that they had stayed in the 80s longer than one night and that the friends coming to terms with each other element had been complete eradicated. I wish they would just have gotten into crazy trouble and confusion and left it at that. Also, Chevy Chase wasn’t very funny. Yet still, I laughed. If you see “Hot Tub Time Machine” be in a silly mood, and you shall not be let down.

Rating:

On a scale of one to Casablanca this film is a “E La Nave Va” (1986)

Rationalization:

Not to say this movie isn’t good, but I feel that it doesn’t quite know what it is at times; whether it should try to bestow some meaning to the events its depicting or whether it should just be a ridiculous comedy. When I went in to see “Hot Tub Time Machine” I wanted pure irreverence. What I got was a tad deluded.