Hot Tub Time Machine

(Movie Review)

I suppose a large part of any enjoyable movie experience is just matching your expectations to the film, and getting in the appropriate mood.

In that respect, perhaps the title of this film is one of the best things about it. With a title like that, you know right from the start you’re going to get a movie that doesn’t make a lot of sense, or have much of a story line. And having been forewarned about this, you don’t really mind when nothing really makes a lot of sense.

This is one of those stupid comedy movies that’s hard to give an intelligent review to. On the whole, I thought the script was pretty lame. But there were lots of little moments mixed throughout the film that brought a smile to my face.

The premise of the film is that 4 guys travel back in time to 1986, through a process that is never explained, for reasons that are never explained. (Somehow a hot tub is involved, and somehow a Russian energy drink Chernobly (sp?) is involved, and something about a magic squirrel as well.)

Man, you know you’re starting to get old when time travel movies start going back to time eras you actually lived through, and even sort of vaguely remember.
It used to be that these time travel movies would go back to exotic mystical times, like the 1950s in “Back to the Future”.

“Back to the Future” is of course the obvious comparison to this movie. And in fact, call me cynical, but I kind of imagine this movie started life as a Hollywood memo somewhere suggesting that the studio remake “Back to the Future” and update it for today’s audiences. The multiple similarities between the two movies are just so obvious.
(For example, kid travelling back in time to meet his young parents. Same kid beginning to fade in and out of existence once they start changing the time stream. The obvious band performance scene near the end. Returning to the present to find out that everything has changed for the better. Et cetera.)

It’s perhaps unfortunate for this film that all these similarities remind us of “Back to the Future”. It might have been a lot better for the filmmakers if they had tried to make us forget about “Back to the Future” as much as possible, because the similarities invite comparison. And man, does this film suffer by comparison.

In “Back to the Future”, there were all these brilliant little plot points subtly set up in the first third of the film (before the time travel incident), which would then begin to pay off once you got back in time, and saw how everything came together.

This film doesn’t really have any of those. There were a few things that were mentioned in the beginning of the film that I expected were going to pay off later, but they never did.
Why the writers couldn’t have bothered to follow through on some of this stuff I don’t know. It wouldn’t have cost them anything extra in special effects. Either they just got lazy or, perhaps more likely, this is one of those studio films that everyone had their hand in, and went in for several re-writes. This would perhaps explain all the bits that never really seemed to go anywhere. (Such as explaining why John Cusack’s girlfriend had moved out on him at the beginning, how Rob Cordery’s character got the nickname “violator”. What actually happened in Cincinnati. Why the town of Kodiak valley deteriorated in the last 20 years. What the connection with the squirrel was. What the “Great white Buffalo” comments meant, et cetera. What was the origin of the antagonism between Rob Corddry’s character and Clark Duke's character. I even thought the time travel bit might explain why the various characters go on the self-destructive paths they do later in life, but we see none of it.)

I was also a bit confused about just how many cans of Chernobly there actually were. Did they have one, or two? And did they use up all of the first one when they spilled it on the hot tub the first night? Apparently not I guess, but unless I missed something, none of this was really made clear in the movie.

The jokes can be a bit lame as well. Take the following, for example:

“Hey, for your information, I’ve had lots of girlfriends. Hot ones.”
“No, you’ve had lots of boyfriends. Gay ones.”

That might not have been quite so bad if this was one of those scenes where the one-liners were flying back and forth so fast you could barely keep track of them all, and immediately forgot about the lamer ones. But it wasn’t. The whole 4 or 5 line conversation between Clark Duke and Rob Corddry was leading up to this punch line, and after it was delivered the filmmakers decided to linger on it —stop the conversation for a reaction and laughs from the rest of the car, and then onto a new topic.
What in the world made them think that joke was worth all that? It’s the kind of awkward moment that makes you wonder just how much these Hollywood screenwriters get paid anyway, and if maybe they’re getting paid way too much whatever it is.

But even though the script can be a bit comedy challenged in parts, I think the actors do a great job of selling the material anyway. All 4 of these guys are great. Rob Corddry, who I’ve enjoyed for years on “The Daily Show” can get slightly annoying at times, but on the whole does a great job of playing the jerk in the group of friends—the kind of guy who is constantly causing his friends all sorts of grief, and then gets upset when they try and call him on it.

John Cusack is, as usual, one of my favorite actors, and does a great job with all the dry humor bits. My favorite part of the film is where Cusack’s character is trying to carefully explain to Rob Corddry’s character that the piece of graffiti he had carved 20 years ago (“Adam sux cox n dix”) is no longer there, and Rob Corddry is so devastated by this (as if this was the worst part of the time travel mess.) It may not sound like much on paper, but the actors really do a great job with the delivery.

(By the way, based on the two gags just previously mentioned, you might conclude this film has a bit of homophobia running through it, and many of the jokes are based off of the assumption that the worst thing a male could have happen to him is to be accused of being gay. And you would be right. But I guess it’s no worse than any of the other frat house comedies out there these days.)

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is one of those Hollywood movies that would have been completely worthless if they hadn’t have gotten a bit of star power behind it. If John Cusack hadn’t have been in this movie, it would have been a disaster.

John Cusack’s character in the film, by the way, is apparently a narcissist and a control freak. Although we don’t really see this so much in his characterization, or in anything he does, we just have to be told it by the rest of the characters. (There was the sticker plan thing in the beginning, but since that happened off camera, and had no other ramifications in the movie, and was so blatantly existing solely just to tell the audience this guy is a control freak, I’m not really sure it counts as effective characterization.) So this is perhaps another example of lazy writing.

Still, having said all that, I must admit that this film got enough laughs out of me that I can’t hate it entirely. And may even give it a cautious recommendation, for anyone looking to kill time watching a brainless comedy.

Link of the Day
Interview with Prof. Chomsky Nov 16 2010

Hot Tub Time Machine: Movie Review (Scripted)