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Pulling off a great comedy is much harder than pulling off a great drama. While one can easily rattle off a number of great dramatic features with solid agreement, the same cannot be said for comedy features. While some may think that Duck Soup is the best comedy of all time, others will rally behind Young Frankenstein or The Hangover. Since comedy is such a subjective thing, it brings out strong arguments about what is deemed funny. Some go for gross-out gags and some go for highbrow wit, while others try and go both sides to the middle. Such is a film like Hot Tub Time Machine, one of the rudest yet funniest flicks to be on the screen in a long time.
The story of Hot Tub Time Machine is as old as fiction. We have three buddies (and a straggler) who get a chance dreamed about since man began to dream. They get to go back and re-do their history.
Nick (Craig Robinson) is a man who owns a dog grooming business but once harbored the dream of being a singing star. Adam (John Cusack) is his best buddy, falling off the relationship cliff and into the rocks of single-hood. Even though his life is in shambles, he still finds time for his Nephew Jacob (Clark Duke), a video game obsessed kid – fatherless and futile with females. The last adult is Lou the Violator (Rob Corddry). He’s our Alpha Male, the Id of the group, the Ass of the trio… a man who lives to party while trying unsuccessfully to hide the bitter aspects of his existence.
As our play opens, the trio is reunited in the hospital. It seems that one of these Musketeers might have tried to commit suicide. So to re-bond, they go with Jacob on a road trip to Kodiak Valley and the Silver Peaks ski lodge that was a crossroads to their younger lives.
But the journey starts bad and get worse. The lodge town is less than a shell of it’s former self. The lodge itself is also a victim of age, with a one-armed bell hop (Crispin Glover). The four check into the same room that they were in back in 1986. Jumping into the hot tub as a male bonding ritual, they accidentally pour a Soviet energy drink on the controls. This short-circuits the electronic controls and throws them back into winter of 1986.
After being more than a little freaked out about the olden fashions and styles, Lou sees it as a second chance to right their wrongs while Jacob warns them that they must not alter the space/time continuum. There is the struggle. Whether to make their modern-days better or risk the wrath of making everything worse. But the more they discover how hard it is not to change the past, the more they do it anyway. They must embrace the chaos dealt to them while trying to keep on the same track.
John Cusack basically plays that same John Cusack character–much more along the lines that he’s done in film after film. There is a very low key manner to his acting, almost Jimmy Stewart in tone, giving off an effortless vibe to the work. He doesn’t take much of a change with the role but delivers it with comic charm.
Craig Robinson is best known for his supporting role in The Office. In this film, he gets many moments to shine. He is a broken married man, giving up on what his life has become. Through his journey in HTTM he begins to see that as bad as his life is, he still deep down loves his wife.
But as good as John Cusack and Craig Robinson are in HTTM, Rob Corddry just steals each and every moment he’s on screen. As the rollicking and rolling Lou, he becomes the Animal House Bluto of this generation. He’s just crazed, seemingly beyond redemption. Towards the end of the piece, Rob does let his character discover the truth to his life, admitting mostly to himself that his 1980s choices were never smart or correct.
In a few words, HTTM is brilliantly stupid. Yes, it is chocked full of idiotic premises that run the gamut of gross to silly. It revels in bad behavior – sexual, boozing and drugging. But it also is very clever in its references to classic 1980s film culture. While it wallows in the mud of excess, it shows a studied reverence to the cinema history that is two decades past. The film starts with an elaborate poop joke, going a catheter bit of shtick, both funny and crude at the same time. . Then HTTM sinks fast into the jugular of hard and heavy laughs. Along the way we get references to just about every flick from the 1980s, from Sixteen Candles to Back to the Future to Better Off Dead.
Director Robert Pink keeps the pace running at a breakneck speed, never letting the audience begin to question the elephant size plot holes that fly along in this piece. He keeps the laughs fly from scene to scene, giving Corddry and the pack a ravenous bit of scenery to chew on.
Hot Tub Time Machine is never going to win any awards because comedies never do. It is not cinema but it is one heck of a fun time at the movies. I laughed from start to finish, which is the most ringing endorsement a film like this could ask for.
