By Katelan Cunningham
My enthusiasm for “Hot Tub Time Machine” was nearly a lone cry. People wondered, “Why is John Cusack lowering his well-established romantic comedy reputation?” “What’s that bald guy doing off ‘The Daily Show’?” and “Why does that kid with the glasses still have that awkward feminine haircut?”
This journey of bonding and bro-dom is a common theme in the past couple years with movies like “Superbad,” “Without a Paddle” and my personal favorite, “The Hangover.”
In every bro movie, friendships are challenged, there is the goal they’re trying to reach, something they are trying to find, the one particular bro who eventually messes it all up and the girl who just gets in the way.
However, in the end, friendship always prevails. So how is “Hot Tub Time Machine” any different? I’m not sure it is, with the obvious exception of a hot tub time machine.
Nick (Craig Robinson), Adam (John Cusack) and Lou (Rob Corddry) are middle-aged friends who have lost touch since their rambunctious days of irresponsible spontaneity. “We were young. We had momentum. We were winning,” Adam reminiscences.
After the near-death/suspected suicide of Lou, they are brought together for a trip to Kodiak Valley. Jacob (Clark Duke) is Adam’s 20-year-old nephew who is living with him because he’d rather sit in the basement and face hard time in Second Life instead of facing his mom’s boyfriend—so he too tags along for the ride.
Kodiak Valley is not the drug-ridden, girl-littered party hub that they remembered. However, they settle in their familiar hot tub (but only after the double doors fly open revealing it has miraculously started boiling and glowing orange). They strip down, hop in, have some drinks, pass out and wake up in 1986. What I wanted was a movie about a hot tub time machine and that’s what I got. The film is focused and consistent and it is hilarious with a moral.
These heartbroken, deceived-by-destiny, substance-reliant men plus nephew Jacob find themselves in a world where their iPhones don’t work, Michael Jackson is still black and MTV still airs music videos. In a frantic state to get out of 1986 and back to 2010, their only clue to a way back to the present is the hot tub maintenance man, aka “mystical time travel guide guy,” played by Chevy Chase.
The humor favors laughing at the failed joke and various crude references to the male anatomy. Admittedly, all of this was expected and still handled with relative taste.
Cusack lovers should have some faith in him. There is no need to fear that this was not a cop-out film for a bit of cash. It may be out of his genre, but he co-produced the film. There is a bit of love and a broken heart or two. Even some questioning of destiny. (“Serendipity” anyone?)
While I didn’t find myself teary-eyed with laughter like in “The Hangover,” “Hot Tub Time Machine” definitely left me with some quotable lines. Nobody woke with Mike Tyson’s tiger, a baby in a closet and lost teeth. However, these guys did wake up to leg warmers, “Miami Vice” T-shirts and cassette players. It is hilarious and just as outrageous as its title implies.
