Come on in, the water’s retro!
After the recent cinematic miscarriage that was MacGruber it was with some trepidation that I ventured into another deliberately cheesy, potentially throwaway comedy in HTTM. This film was better yet still left a lot on the table, but at least for the main part it tried.
John Cusack is Adam, a recently dumped nobody who has a 20 year old computer nerd nephew living in his basement and who has fallen out of touch with the friends he grew up with. That changes when one of them named Lou is thought to have attempted suicide one night. So Adam and Nick (Craig Robinson) decide to organize an impromptu “Boy’s Weekend” away in the snowfields to shake Lou loose from his funk. The nephew Jacob also tags along, despite Lou openly detesting him and treating his as a 5th wheel.
Once they arrive at the snow the gents find that the place that was such a paradise in their youth is no longer such a hoppin’ place. Their old room from 20 + years ago is run down, the locals are more detached than pleased to see them and their one-armed bellhop is apathetic and openly aggressive… And there is a dead raccoon decomposing in the hot tub.
The boys spend the first day trying to force a high of sorts, resorting to alcohol, pointless boasting and recalling the feats of better days when they ruled the roost. That evening though as things threaten to deteriorate to the point where it becomes irredeemable the Hot Tub suddenly fires into action, and the boys hold an impromptu nekkid hot tub party that rocks thru the night.
In the AM they all head out into the snow, feeling amazingly rejuvenated and capable of anything, only very shortly afterwards they realize that it was no ordinary magic rejuvenation hot tub, it was a hot tub time machine.
Aaaahhh. Of course it was!
Adam, Nick and Lou all appear as their normal 30/40 something selves, to themselves. Everyone else sees them as the 1986 version when they were young and fit and 80s looking (and it must be said 100% acne and blemish free). Jacob is still the nerdy looking chubby 20 year old from before, only now he flickers on and off for some reason.
Being (now) set in the 80s the extras all have big hair, day glo colours and bizarre outfits, there are also at least a dozen other films namechecked through this one for some reason.
Hot Tub Time Machine inhabits the same orbit as Groundhog Day, only with nowhere near the same level of care and ultimately success. Once you swallow the fact that these guys are now in their late teens and are required to reenact events from their 1986 visit in order to get back to the present day then what follows should be a cinch. Only of course not everything goes to plan, some choose to do things a little different this time around with varying results.
There are some disturbingly crude scenes and events that seem out of place and there just to get the ewwww factor up, which works more from an ewwww perspective than from a ha-ha that’s funny perspective if you ask me. But ever since American Pie and Road Trip showed filmmakers that gay jokes and gross out stuff is apparently hilarious that is par for the course.
The dialogue and jokes are often aggressive, crass, crude or a combination thereof. None of these things offend me at all but they don’t necessarily guarantee a chuckle either.
Most of the big subplot climaxes (of which there are many as every guy has one or more), involve sex or violence, and the laughter that comes from seeing clumsy doggy-style sex (just one example) quickly dissipates once you realize that was the joke. This was a film about out of touch near 40 year olds “gettin’ they groove back” by being inexplicably transported back to their youth, I think if the same thing happened to me I might find many of the low brow highjinks a little funnier.
I will give points for the fact that even while they they aimed low at least they managed to succeed, MacGruber couldn’t even achieve that level of mediocrity.
Final Rating – 7 / 10. I’m conflicted. I think I was entertained, but now 24 hours later I can’t think of a single thing that I find amusing from the film. It’s a begrudging 7/10. (I think I may regret this later if I watch it again, hope not.)
