I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I sat down to watch Hot Tub Time Machine. It was clearly a hacky, lifeless concept, but the advertising not only acknowledged this fact, it reveled in it. Its director Steve Pink made the horribly incompetent 2006 comedy Accepted, but was also the writer of successful John Cusack vehicles High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank. Would this be an observant lampooning of 80s era sex comedies or a crass exploitation of the recent success of The Hangover? Would it be a morality tale with a heart or a balls out, nihilist romp that aims to offend? Most importantly, would it be funny? And why the heck is John Cusack in it?
To do a plot synopsis seems stupid, but I guess here it goes. Three aging friends and a nerdy 20 year-old tagalong, each with a flaw or regret, take a trip out to the ski lodge where they once shared moments of debauchery and joy as teenagers. When things go awry with a mysterious hot tub they are sent back in time to 1986 where the three aging friends are in their teenage primes and the 20 year-old is supposedly just about to be conceived, even though 1986 was 24 years ago. I guess 1989 just didn’t seem as funny as 1986. Or maybe this film is actually a period piece set in 2007. Nevertheless, while retracing their previous steps on that fateful 1986 weekend (in order to not tamper with the space time continuum) they somehow, through their ups and down, find ways to fix their signature flaws or erase their carefully spelled out regrets. And then they live super happy ever after. Yuck.
Clearly no attempts were taken at trying to come up with an interesting or unique story, so the focus must then go to character. John Cusack plays Adam. His live in girlfriend has recently left him and moved out of their shared dwelling, and it’s starting to look like he may just not be very good at this whole relationship thing. Faced with this newest defeat, he begins to regret breaking up with his nubile young high school girlfriend all the way back in 1986. You see, she had a really tight bod and may have been the one, but he messed it up by breaking up with her and getting stabbed in the eye in the process. Cusack, as you might imagine, plays the role of the straight man here. What doesn’t seem to add up is that his character is portrayed as a valley girl dating, coke snorting, party animal back in 1986; but Cusack seems to not have got the memo and plays him as the same introspective but smart-mouthed outsider that he used to play in all those teen comedies like Say Anything in the 80s. And if I had to guess I would say the explanation is nothing more than the fact that John Cusack used to play characters in movies from the 80s. That’s the entire joke. This is a movie set back in the 80s and you know John Cusack from said 80s. No more thought seems to have been put into his casting other than that; and despite the fact that every comedy needs its straight man, Cusack plays the role too straight, never feeling like he even inhabits the same world as the broad, gross out gags that we’re subjected to throughout.
Craig Robinson plays Nick, a hen pecked dog groomer. He is madly in love with his wife, but it appears that she has been cheating on him. He used to be the leader of a band (you know, back in 1986), but he gave that all up when he got married and settled down. Faced with the proposition of either standing up to his wife and possibly destroying the marriage that he sacrificed everything else for or settling further back into his role of emasculated cuckold, he instead opts to go on a road trip with his old high school buddies. What Craig Robinson does is very uniquely Craig Robinson. He’s done it regularly on NBC’s The Office, and he’s done it in brief roles in recent comedies like Knocked Up and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. While he’s a bit one note, I find his act to be hysterical. So far I haven’t tired of it and I’d say that many of his dry, unenthusiastic line readings were my favorite bits of the film. I tire of the same small handful of archetypes showing up in every single one of these guy comedies over and over again, however. Did we really need to, once again, see a subplot about a man that is unable to stand up to his wife learn to take charge and become the pants wearer of his relationship during a series of hijinks filled misadventures with his irresponsible buddies? For me, the answer is no, Lord no.
The third of our quartet is a character by the name of Lou (Rob Corddry). Lou is an unrepentant jerk, an alcoholic, and he may have recently tried to kill himself. While Nick and Adam have at least tried to transition into adulthood, Lou has refused. He dresses like he did when he was a teenager, he parties like he did when he was a teenager, he drives the same car he did when he was a teenager, and rightly so, nobody appears to still be returning his calls. He feels resentment for the way his two former best friends have left him behind, and it’s his nervous breakdown that spawns the idea of the trip back to the ski lodge. Lou, as a character, is a cross between Will Ferrell’s turn as Frank the Tank in Old School and an attempt at recreating Zach Galifianakis’ breakout role as Alan in The Hangover. Rob Corddry is talented enough to make the character funny, and it’s his job to shoulder many of the big laughs of the film, but the material he is given is too derivative and well worn to have the same impact as the performances that inspired it. Corddry even seems a bit out of his element playing the part. The character is pretty standard loud, drunken oaf fare and I get the feeling that he would be better served at playing a quieter, more uniquely eccentric role. The character seemed to be written as a pretty transparent attempt at launching Corddry as the next big thing in the guy centered buddy bonding comedy genre, like Seth Rogen and Zach Galifianakis before him, but I just don’t think this was the role that’s going to do it for him. I hope that he does find it sometime soon though, because while he might not be leading man material, I thought his timing and sensibilities were good enough that he should have no problem carving out a strong niche in Hollywood.
The aforementioned 20 year-old kid that tags along for the ride is named Jacob (Clark Duke). He is the Cusack character’s nephew, and he would rather spend his time locked down in Cusack’s basement playing video games than he would being out in the sun meeting people or doing things. I suppose he is brought along on the trip so that he can learn to loosen up, but that is never really explicitly stated. Even curiouser is the fact that he never really learns to take it easy over the course of the film. As a matter of fact, he never seems to really do anything. Because he got sent back to a time before he was born, he is worried that anything they do different in 1986 might lead to him never existing in the first place, and it appears that this is his entire function in the film. He exists so that the other characters have a reason to have to retrace their steps and relive the moments we’ve been prepared for them to relive. Jacob never appears to us as an organic feeling character; he is conceived merely as a tool to serve the plot. Whether or not Duke has any real comedic chops is up for debate, as he’s never given much more to do than wear neckties and look worried. You might expect an uptight, nerdy young kid to have some snarky and derisive comments for the over the hill party animal has-beens that he’s forced to spend time with, but his character never really goes that route. You might expect much of the tension of the film to revolve around him as he tries to ensure his future existence, but it never really gets that much focus. In the end there doesn’t seem to be much reason for Duke’s character to exist in this film at all.
This sense of hollow conception pops up in a few of the supporting players as well. Lizzy Caplan plays a rock reporter who takes an interest in John Cusack’s character. The way the two of them interact is completely unbelievable and ridiculous. She comes out of nowhere, and we’re given no reason why she might be interested in Cusack’s confused, insane appearing Adam. She exists solely as a tacked on romance angle and never as a real person who lives, breathes, and makes her own decisions. Chevy Chase has a small role as a mysterious hot tub repairman who seems to have a mystical connection to the time travel, but never gives any straight answers. Similar mystical guides to the story’s novum have appeared in countless other films that look like this one, and the characters themselves remark as much, but nothing is ever done to further parody the fact that his character is a cliché other than a wink to the audience. Chase’s character is never explained, never used as comedy, he simply exists so that the time travel in the film can exist. At this point Hot Tub Time Machine is only a slight level above films like Click; they’re offering up the same tired material, but HTTM is doing it with a self-aware wink and a nod. When it really comes down to it, how much is that wink worth? Just because you acknowledge the fact that what you’re doing is trite, it doesn’t make it any less so. HTTM takes the easy way out, giving you a shrug of its shoulders rather than making the effort to craft any real parody or satire.
So, if you’re keeping score at home, this film does nothing interesting with story nor does it craft any worthwhile characters. Despite those failures, is it at least funny? Sometimes. Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry have their moments. Crispin Glover steals every scene he’s in, and maybe the entire film, playing a small role as a bellhop. Every once in a while a gag hit and I found myself chuckling; but there was also a lot of stuff that missed with me. I didn’t find any of the “hey, remember the 80s?” schtick to be funny in the slightest. By the time the overbearing sarcasm of the 90s got through with riffing on the absurd trends of the 80s well over a decade ago I was already done with the subject. To bring it up for laughs here in 2010 seems like nostalgia for nostalgia. There’s a lot of gross out humor that didn’t work with me when it was all the rage during the Farrelly brother’s peak ten years ago, and it sure as heck fire didn’t work for me being dug back up this much later. In rapid fire succession we’re treated to sight gags involving pee, poop, vomit, and wieners. The only thing I didn’t count was a fart joke to run the full gamut of lazy comedic crap.
And the funny thing is that despite spending the last however many paragraphs tearing this movie apart, I came out of it with the feeling that it was a middle of the road effort. It made me laugh enough times, it chose it’s topless actresses well, isn’t that enough to be a mild recommendation to head out to the theater? After mulling the film over, dissecting it a little bit, and finding more and more things I didn’t like about it, I would have to say no. Maybe five, ten years ago this would have been enough to earn a mild recommendation, but not any more. We’ve seen so many of these same kinds of comedies hit the multiplexes over and over again that eventually somebody is going to have to branch out and do something different to maintain the audience’s attention. For me, I’m at the point of being done already. If you’re not going to engage me with a story, or present me with some memorable characters, then you better make your gags so fall down funny that making any mention of such things in a criticism seems unnecessary. Hot Tub Time Machine, while funny in places, didn’t come close to reaching that transcendent level. What it did offer was so cookie-cutter and mundane that 48 hours out from my viewing of it I’m having a hard time remembering much of what happened in it at all.
