DVDFile

There are two things about Hot Tub Time Machine that stand out right off the bat: 1) It is wonderfully refreshing for an oversized adolescent sex comedy to be this rooted in 1980s storytelling style (it really could have been made in 1986), and 2) It's nowhere near as good as it should be.

And this is coming from a denizen of HTTM's grandest potential audience - when I saw that John Cusack and company were going to make what looked wonderfully like a 21st century revamp of Hot Dog! or Ski School, I was ready to sign. Call me a dinosaur, but I'm nowhere near as interested in Jason Biggs humping a pie or horny highschoolers accidentally drinking beers with ejaculate in them - to me, that's simply inconsequential. Big bare boobies, a handful of shit jokes and music montages featuring hits from the 80s? Now that's the kind of cinema I'm talking about.

The Mensa-candidate plot behind Hot Tub Time Machine is as one-note as you'd imagine - Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke all get hammered and end up in a hot tub that doubles as a time machine (imagine that), and they go from the new millennium back to 1986, where banged-hair and pinned-jeans are back in crystal clear focus. Here they have to figure out how to get back home - Chevy Chase helps out as a kind of time transporter mechanic, FYI.

Hot Tub Time Machine's bawdy moments - relatively rampant nudity, some foul-mouthed rants of imperative note - hit the nail right on the head, but the movie loses its mojo quite quickly and never regains it. It's all the screenplay's fault: Cusack is as reliable as ever, and Corddry's presence on screen is seriously hilarious when he fires on all cylinders, but HTTM's big-concept narrative never makes good on its silly irreverence. The movie gets a few things right, but the world still needs a rock-solid 1980s-throwback comedy. I think it's possible - maybe someday.....

Comments (3)

Patrick July 07, 2010

Good Times

It was a good throw back to the 80's, and yes, it could have been better. Lots of flaws, like the cell phone at the ski resort, that phone came out a few years later. Anyway, if you can look past all that, Craig Robinson really steals the show. He was the best character, had some of the best lines and his charisma is hard to dismiss. Not a perfect film by any means, but certainly a good time.

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Russell Swift McCall July 12, 2010

R@R no hard feelings

a hot tub for a time machine, I mean really? and how could someone go back in time and end up inside themselves? thats
stupid. but I can't spell so that's pretty stupid too. Thank you for making this movie I'm certain the new time traveling Idea will really catch on.

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fashiongoods01 July 20, 2010

http://www.shoes2.us/

Here's Lindsay and her sister Benjamin Buttons making that easy money yesterday in Beverly Hills by posing and pretending to box at some Muscle Milk Light (aka the nectar that drips out of Chyna's urethra) event. Instead of punching that mitt, bitch should be punching herself....and

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