As amusingly stupid as advertised, Hot Tub Time Machine milks the ‘80s for laughs but gets most of its
comedic mileage out of a more general strain of boys-being-morons insanity. In
Steve Pink’s visually cruddy film, Adam (John Cusack) is reunited with friend
Nick (Craig Robinson) when their high-school buddy Lou (Rob Corddry) almost
kills himself via car exhaust fumes while rocking out to Motley Crüe’s “Home
Sweet Home.” To cheer Lou up, Adam and Nick – along with Adam’s nerdy virgin
nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) – visit an old ski resort haunt, where they jump in
their room’s hot tub and magically transport back to 1986, where everyone sees
them as their younger selves. This scenario, and the guys’ ensuing attempts to
not change anything about their pasts (because of the butterfly effect), leads
to a fair share of jokes about ‘80s fashion and politics, of which about a
quarter hit their intended mark. Yet amidst the uneven period goof-offery and plot
strands that find the characters learning about themselves, the story mixes
ribald lunacy with wink-wink knowingness to witty effect, with the cast’s easy,
rambunctious rapport leading to a raft of lewd back-and-forths often laced with
sorrow over youthful opportunities squandered. Shakespeare it most certainly
isn’t, but the self-consciousness of Hot
Tub’s silliness turns the film into an invitingly idiotic ride, one marked
by a standout Rob Corddry performance as a belligerently boorish prick with a
tongue made for both malice and hair metal.
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