“Hot Tub Time Machine” is about a hot tub that’s also a time machine. Well, why not? A phone booth worked just fine for Bill and Ted.
The wet and warm time travelers are Adam (John Cusack), Lou (Rob Corddry) and Nick (Craig Robinson), three friends who partied all the time in college but have grown apart in their middle age. They hope to recapture their youth at Kodiak Valley, the ski resort where they partook in much debauchery during the 1980s.
Along for the ride is Adam’s teenage nephew Jacob (Clark Duncan), who spends his time in the basement playing “Second Life” where his avatar is a prisoner in solitary confinement. In other words, Jacob doesn’t interact with anyone even in the virtual world.
They get to Kodiak Valley, which is now run down. They book into their old suite, which is now falling apart. And they hop into the hot tub even though the water is glowing yellow. When they get out, it’s 1986.
To each other, the three friends still appear to be in their 40s. But to everyone else (and mirrors) they are teenagers again. Jacob hasn’t been born yet and is paranoid something may prevent his conception. “I write ‘Stargate’ fan fiction,” he says, “so I think I know what’s going on here.”
Jacob insists the others do exactly what they did in the past to keep the future intact. The problem is, this particular weekend was a lousy one. Adam breaks up with his hot girlfriend; Lou gets pummeled by a bully; and Nick freezes on stage during the concert that could make his career. They don’t want to repeat this history.
“Hot Tub Time Machine” is a loose and lewd reworking of that essential piece of ’80s cinema, “Back to the Future.” Even though that is the one of the few time travel movies the characters fail to mention by name, sly references abound. Duncan’s voice is often a dead-on echo of Michael J. Fox’s squeaky delivery. Where Marty McFly invented rock ’n’ roll, Nick invents the Black Eyed Peas.
The boys also get to play with Crispin Glover’s density … er, destiny. Glover, who played Fox’s dad in “Future,” first appears in “Hot Tub” as a surly, one-armed bellhop. Back in 1986, he is cheerful and has both arms. We know that sometime before the end of the movie, that arm’s gonna go. Lou is strangely eager to witness the moment.
“Back to the Future” mined much of its humor in warm nostalgia for the 1950s. Nostalgia for the ’80s is more ironic in “Hot Tub Time Machine.” The soundtrack is filled with bubble gum hits from Scritti Politti, Nu Shooz, Men Without Hats and other bands with names to make you grin. When Lou suggests they could have a blast reliving the 1980s, Adam says, “Are you kidding? We had Reagan and AIDS. Let’s get out of here.” On the plus side, they also had “Bloom County” and genuine music videos on MTV.
“Hot Tub Time Machine” also tries to capitalize on the resurgence of R-rated sex comedies like “The Hangover” – a genre that bloomed in the 1980s with “Porky’s” and its several thousand rip-offs. Director Steve Pink aims for the tone of those old comedies, but all he gets right are the gratuitous nudity and blonde preppy villains.
The moments that are supposed to shock us into laughter are the most forced. Someone should have told screen writers Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris you only need to drop the f-bomb two or three times to get an R-rating, and that they don’t need to work it into every sentence.
Of all movies, comedies – especially goofy, commercial ones like this – are most subject to test screenings. Filmmakers show the movies to dozens of audiences, and the jokes that don’t get laughs are cut. While this gets rid of dead space, coherence sometimes is sacrificed too. “Hot Tub Time Machine” features a few jokes, one of them big, about a squirrel messing with the time continuum. These moments are conspicuously random, like leftovers from an abandoned subplot.
Sloppy and needlessly smutty though it is, “Hot Tub Time Machine” is funny when it doesn’t try so hard and sincere in its themes of friendship and middle-age malaise. It also has the shaggy, lovable quality Cusack brought to his 1980s comedies, particularly “The Sure Thing.” Connoisseurs of Cusack’s career will appreciate the “Better Off Dead” joke, although it left me wishing the filmmakers had cast Cusack’s co-star from that movie, Curtis Armstrong, in the Corddry role.
Not only would Armstrong’s presence have boosted the nostalgia factor (he also played Booger in “Revenge of the Nerds”), he would have made Lou something besides insufferable. Armstrong can act; Corddry can’t.
Cusack, Robinson and Duncan, along with Lizzy Kaplan as a music journalist who could alter Cusack’s future, are affable enough to counter Corddry’s raving. Broad comedies have the luxury of being inept as long as they deliver sufficient laughs. Much of “Hot Tub Time Machine” doesn’t work, but enough of it does.
'Hot Tub Time Machine'
Three stars out of four
Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, nudity, drug use and pervasive language
Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes