How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
I have to admit, as far as containers go, "Hot Tub Time Machine" sounds like a lot more fun than "The Hurt Locker" or "The Killing Jar." Too bad it's full of stagnant toilet water.
The premise seems novel, but the movie is not. Like most comedies these days, it obsesses over emasculation. John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry play unfulfilled 40-year-olds whose lives have deteriorated (more accurately, whose balls have shriveled) in one way or another, while Clark Duke plays Cusack's sedentary, Second Life-addicted nephew. They decide to travel to a mythical ski resort to recover their waning manhood. When they get there, they all pile into a hot tub that inexplicably transports them back to 1986: a time of leg-warmers, cassette players, teen movie clichés and funny-sounding music that people don't listen to anymore.
The performers are talented on their own, but they never cohere as a group. Corddry complements the film's over-the-top style as the group's obligatory unhinged asshole, but Robinson, a much subtler character actor, seems to be secretly pining for more nuanced material. As for Cusack, the most I can say about his character is that he runs off and has a 'soulful conversation' with an 'edgy girl' at one point, which completely kills the mood. It must have been in his contract.
The problem — indeed, the biggest problem with the film — is that they feel like yet another arbitrarily assembled B-team. Why were these four very different personalities thrown into a hot tub together if their rapport isn't particularly good? Because four is a magic marketing number, as the mathematical ad campaign can attest. "Hot Tub Time Machine" is structurally identical to every other comedy — "Wild Hogs" included — in which four losers defeat their angst by going on a trip. It's the easiest, most generic kind of escapism you can manufacture, and it feels that way.
It's disappointing that a lot of the film's material isn't even time-sensitive. Projectile vomit is not shackled to a decade. Nor are boobs. You'd think the film would borrow its debauchery from Bret Easton Ellis, but it's pretty standard lowbrow fare, poured from a vat in the comedy factory. The most effective jokes are the ones that actually address the generation gap, poking fun at boxy technology or contrasting Duke's character with kids who actually go outside. But there are surprisingly few of those.
Look, it's the obligatory March dude comedy. It's another return to the well-worn log cabin of dick jokes, only this time it's literally a log cabin and the walls are covered with Mötley Crüe posters. If that's enough to convince you to see it — if you really need a trip to the treehouse, away from thought and women — then see it by all means. Show up drunk and you'll have a blast. Just be aware that if "The Hangover" was Vegas, this is Atlantic City, and the ticket costs the same.
