Unreal Movie Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

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You walk into a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine with managed expectations. A pretty random cast, a preposterous concept and a million different 80s references could really be a recipe for anything, both good and bad. Fortunately for the film, it just so happens to be a cocktail for success, and Hot Tub Time Machine is a welcome flashback to the raunch of the 80s and an era when time travel movies actually used to be fun, before all the killer robots started showing up.

Nick (Craig Robinson) is a dog groomer who has left his musical dreams behind. Lou (Rob Corddry) is an alcoholic who is on the brink of self-inflicted death. Adam (John Cusack) has been recently left by his girlfriend and his nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) won’t stop playing video games in the basement.

With everyone’s lives more or less in the shitter, the group decides to go on a weekend getaway to their old stomping grounds at a ski lodge up north. Unfortunately, when they get there, they find the place is a shell of what it once was, falling apart at the seams and populated only by a surly one-armed bellhop (Crispin Glover).

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Did people bikini ski in the 80s?

With nothing much to do, they decide to take a dip in the room’s hot tub, and then, for reasons that can (and should) not be explained, a spilled energy drink on the tub’s circuitry sends them into a spinning vortex back to 1986.

When they arrive, they quickly discover where they are when they see a sea of neon color on the ski slopes and the locals still believe Michael Jackson to be black. They start to stress out about the space-time continuum and running into their past selves which would make the universe explode, but when they look in the mirror, they realize that they ARE themselves 20 years ago, and no such paradoxes exist.

Being the good nerd he is, Jacob starts warning them all about the consequences of time travel, and how if they change anything, Hitler could become president of even worse, Jacob himself could never be born, as this was about the very time he was conceived. He fears this even more when he runs into his own mother (Collette Wolfe) and finds her to be a hard partying cokehead with an eye to polish any man’s ski pole that walks by.

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Hot, slutty mom = time travel awkwardness.

The guys desperately try to recreate the exact weekend they had way back when in order to not screw with the fate of the universe. Adam is supposed to dump his hot girlfriend, Lou is supposed to get his ass kicked by the douchey ski patrol and Nick is supposed to bomb with his band on stage.

But as the weekend progresses, each realizes that recreating your past mistakes is a lot harder than they thought, and really, what’s so great about their current lives that they don’t want to change it all up?

Once the movie throws the rules out the window and everyone starts trying to alter their future lives for the better, that’s when things get really good, and it’s refreshing to see a time travel movie that doesn’t take itself so damn seriously. Has it really been that long since Back to the Future and Bill and Ted?

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Get her before she’s fat!

Hot Tub Time Machine borrows liberally from the 80s, with moments taken directly from BTTF (Nick’s onstage performance of future radio hits for one), and others done more as homages to various 80s icons. Karate Kid’s William Zabka shows up as the film’s lead douche, John Cusack sits Indian style and leans in for his classic 16 Candles kiss. It’s a movie you’d probably have to see more than once to catch all the 80s goodness that’s been crammed into it.

But is it funny? Yes, and more so than the green-band, plot-spoiling trailers would have you believe. Cusack, Robinson, Corddry and Duke are an incredibly random cast to put together, but it works, and this will likely be a breakout vehicle for the latter three, with Rob Corddry’s over-the-top asshole Lou in the lead.

In fact, really the only piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit is Cusack himself. Sure, the guy is an 80s icon, and is essentially playing the straight man in the film, but his plot is just so tame and his romance with Lizzy Caplan as a Spin Magazine journalist doesn’t really fit with the tone of the rest of the film, as all his friends are running around actively trying to f*ck up the future as much as possible.

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I think the looks on their faces set the scene nicely.

And fundamentally, this dumb, gross out comedy is a pretty smart one. It’s time travel rules make a hell of a lot more sense than most movies in the genre you see today, but even with its unavoidable plot holes, you never really care about them and in the end, the alter-future payoff is a satisfying arc for nearly all the characters involved.

It’s an unexpected surprise from what initially seemed like a throwaway title. It takes a tired genre and kicks it in the ass, and I’d like to jump in a hot tub and zap myself 10 years into the future to see if this manages to become a cult classic.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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4 Comments

  1. Minor spoiler alert……..
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    best throwaway 80’s reference is someone yelling “I want my 2 dollars” just offscreen when the guys hit up the ski slopes for the first time in the past.

  2. Hot Tub Time Machine is getting good reviews!??…the sixth seal hath been opened! The hoofbeats of the horsemen are nigh! Prepare for end of days!!

  3. A cult classic?? You’ve got to be kidding me, man. I started reading all your reviews (starting with the latest) and it’s only getting worse. What’s next? Sex and the City 2 is also a cult classic for you?
    This movie is just another I’m-40-but-I-still-act-like-I’m-teenager film. It’s not funny at all, (except for one or two sentences like “what’s an e-mail?” and “what color is MJ?” which is the best thing they got from basically a good idea) it’s full of retarded American pie – toilet humor, which, still can somehow work for those movies, since the characters as teenagers, but here? Middle-aged bald dudes acting like half-retarded kids? I mean come on.
    And it’s misogynous.
    A cult classic? Gee.

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