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At The Plot Hole we normally don’t concern ourselves with mainstream films – not because we’re snobs, but because we prefer to give space to films that aren’t going to get 800 reviews on their opening day – but for a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine, starring John Cusack, Rob Corddry, and Craig Robinson, which mostly takes place during my gawky fourteen-year old year of 1986, I will make an exception. It also doesn’t hurt that I wheedled my way into an advance screening, and now get to review it before it actually hits theaters, like a big-time douchey movie critic. I am actually writing this before I’ve seen the movie, in keeping with the time travel motif, so read on to jump forward in time and find out if the movie is worth your ten dollars.
As we get older, we tend to drift away from the people who were so important to us when we were younger. It is an inevitable part of life, even if it does suck. For Adam, Lou, and Nick (Cusack, Corddry, and Robinson) it also has a lot to do with the sad-sack state of their lives. After a botched suicide attempt by Lou, the trio decide to recapture some of their youth at the ski resort they used to frequent as freewheeling, recreational drug-using teenagers in the 80’s, with Adam’s nephew, Jacob, in tow. Needless to say, they find the resort town dilapidated and broken down, clearly a metaphor for their own lousy adult lives, and commence to drowning their sorrows in booze and self-pity.
Until the hot tub on the deck of their room, previously a raccoon mausoleum, suddenly erupts into golden life. After stripping down and hopping in, the quartet proceed to have a night of wild abandon (watch the cuts carefully), and, as the premise of the movie dictates, wake up in 1986. After a wonderful skiing scene which calls to mind Better Off Dead (including a very obvious joke that no one in the theater other than my brother and I got) they head into the ski area’s cafeteria where they are confronted with the 80’s in such horrific detail that not only can they not deny it, but Nick has a literal screaming fit and runs off, bowling people over on his way.
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That's a pretty sweet cast. |
The rest of the film is about what you would expect it to be about, namely everyone getting a second chance to right wrongs from their past. Problem being, if they don’t keep everything exactly the way it was, Clark will never have been born, since his quick math, and the fact that he occasionally flickers out of existence, suggests that he was conceived on that very night. His mother, Adam’s sister, is at the resort for Winterfest, but Clark never knew who is father was, so he can’t micromanage his own conception. He thus becomes the cipher for keeping the story on track, from allowing the three apathetic adults to simply run around willy-nilly. He has a visceral, vested interest in events playing out as they should. He is also the go-between for a mysterious repair man who seems to know about the time travel, except he only speaks in riddles, who is played by Chevy Chase, deciding to be funny for the first time in at least fifteen years. All told, the four guys have to settle old scores, make new bridges to the future, and recreate the anomaly that created the Jacuzzi vortex in the first place in order to GET BACK TO THE FUTURE. (That was bad…I apologize). 
Did you know this douche in '86? Were YOU this douche in '86? |
The best praise I can give this film is its hard-R status. It opens up with strong language and a severe poop joke, and continues to only get more vulgar, and even pop out a few sweater puppies. Director Steve Pink, who has worked with Cusack on several projects in the past, both as a writer and producer, keeps the action at a brisk pace. Even in the romantic interludes and character epiphanies we never get the mid-movie slowdown that is usually the milieu for character comedies such as this. The 80’s reference come at you fast and furious, and to call the movie hilarious would be the essence of understatement. |
Amidst the hilarity and genuinely disturbing sight gags (imagine Rob Corddry with semen all over his face or pulling his own catheter out) the movie does have a few flaws: one which will hinder its box office, and one which will hinder its longevity. The first problem is that the 80’s gags, while being spot-on 100% of the time, including an awe-inspiring recreation of Motley Crue’s Home Sweet Home video, are going to completely alienate anyone born after 1975. The second is that the jokes referencing modern-day technology are going to become dated in direct proportion to how fast technology evolves, which we all know is blindingly fast.
My overall recommendation, however, would be to see the film, because it is belly-laugh hilarious, and definitely worth a theater viewing. I loved seeing Craig Robinson get so much screentime, Rob Corddry is a fucking force of unnature, and us oldsters will love seeing Cusack return to his Savage Steve Holland-esque roots. And if you aren’t sold already, there is a significant role essayed by a one Mr. Crispin Hellion Glover. And you can’t be that with a severed arm. |  An unwritten rule in cinema is that there is no such thing as too much Crispin Glover. |
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