Riotous Hot Tub a Boiling Comedy
After a night of drinking while sitting in a ski resort hot tub, recently dumped Adam (John Cusack), his video obsessed nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) and his former best friends Lou (Rob Corddry) and Nick (Craig Robinson) wake up the next morning to discover somehow they’ve been transported back to 1986. A key weekend in the lives of the three forty-somethings, and right about the time the youngest of the foursome was conceived, the group are given the opportunity to bring about change just hours earlier they would have found inconceivable.
Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, John Cusack and Clark Duke in MGM's Hot Tub Time Machine
Crazy concept and title aside, Hot Tub Time Machine is a very, very funny movie. While a little long and more than a little unfocused, in the end this raucous movie is more enjoyable then The Hangover and it’s one heck of a lot smarter, too. Unlike that freewheeling shock comedy this one actually has a few things on its mind, the filmmakers offering up a treatise on reaching middle age without being able to reconcile past regrets that’s at times unexpectedly perceptive.
With that being so I actually think this one is going to hold up better on repeat viewings then that Summer 2009 monster smash was. The simple truth is that there is that Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris’ screenplay just offers up more food for thought, and as gross and as appalling as much of the frivolity is comedy based in wit always has a more lasting impact then that based solely on shock ever has.
Not that I’m saying this is the best thing since sliced bread. While director Steve Pink (Accepted), the one-time Grosse Pointe Blank co-writer does his best to keep things focused and under control there are times when the length of the film just doesn’t suit the silliness of the majority of the material. There are some definite pacing problems here, and just as things should be rolling and rollicking to their conclusion the narrative instead spits and sputters like a Toyota Prius before its recall.
But like that aforementioned 1997 hitman classic this fellow Cusack enterprise has much more going for it than it ever does against, and while I’m not sure it’s going to achieve the same iconic status I can certainly foresee viewers wanting to return to it on numerous occasions in the future. The four cast members play off one another beautifully, Corddry’s angrily irreconcilable dummy easily stealing the show. The great Crispin Glover gets some clever bits surrounding a mysteriously soon-to-be-missing arm, while an inspired sequence set to a Black Eyed Peas song had me giggling start to finish.
Did I laugh as loudly here as I did during that first viewing of The Hangover? No, I did not, but I did laugh with much more frequency, so many of the comedic moments having a mischievous sparkle to them that continually tickled my funny bone. I found more to grab onto here then I had expected to walking in, and while the final scenes did drag they didn’t do so enough to dilute my enjoyment of the picture as a hole. For my money Hot Tub Time Machine is a praiseworthy comedic effort and, more importantly, worth the multiplex ticket price, and whether it be 1986, 2010 or 2034 going to the theatre to see it is as good an idea as any a person is likely to have.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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