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Hot Tub Time Machine was a surprise hit from 2010 – a silly little bit of slapstick along the lines of Weird Science or Real Genius, one of those comedies that mixed science and mirth to a highly improbable degree. Well, nothing breeds excess more than success, so we now have the sequel cleverly named Hot Tub Time Machine 2.
The story starts right after the events of the first film. We see how the four have moved on and moved up after the ski trip. Lou (Rob Corddry) was the singer of “Motley Lou” and started an internet company Lougle. Nick (Craig Robinson) is a music superstar. At the beginning, he is singing his new song “Stay,” and there is this brilliant short cameo of a violated Lisa Loeb during that sequence. Jacob (Clark Duke) still lives in the shadow of his father, Lou, and still struggles to be his own man. John Cusack passed on the sequel and proves to be the smartest member of the original cast.
Within a few minutes, the film begins to fall apart. Lou is being a big jerk, both at work and in his personal life. The night of a big party, he is shot in the nether regions. Jacob and Nick pick Lou up and place him in the hot tub to go back one minute in order to save him. Instead, they go 10 years into the future.
The three find that someone from the future has gone back into the past to kill Lou. So Lou, Nick and Jacob must figure out who in this timeline wants to do this miserable deed. We also find that Lou and Nick have fallen on bad times in the future. Lou’s company is not as powerful and Nick has become a has-been musician with a bad ‘party’ single. Only Jacob has become successful with a smoking hot and frequently naked wife.
In order to figure out what is going on they befriend Adam Jr. (Adam Scott), the son of John Cusack’s character from the first movie. This man is a wide-eyed innocent who is getting married to Jill (Gillian Jacobs). This new foursome of guys has to run around in the future to find the killer. But, mostly they do massive amounts of drugs and party the time away. They also cuss like sailors on shipboard. Someone needs to tell those involved that just dropping an F-bomb does not make it funny.
The only truly hilarious bit was the idea that smart cars have become really smart cars, with the ability to dispense justice… despite their unimposing appearance. This future is pretty much like what is going on today, with only masturbating computers being the big invention.
Rob Corddry is a brilliant comic but here he is just a very bitter man. The question is why anyone would actually care if he got shot. One of the charms with the first film was the play between the sweet of John Cusack and the sour of Corddry. Here, we get just the sour. Corddry is more like Jon Lovitz – when used sparingly, the actors are a great touch but neither can carry an entire motion picture. There is little charm in Hot Tub Time Machine 2 but there is a load of crudeness. Adam Scott takes over the John Cusack character as Adam Jr. and he is just not up to the task. He does have this wide-eyed enthusiasm with the performance, but it is all for naught. There is no sympathy in his character.
The film is once again directed by Steve Pink. This time out he doesn’t have the script or the situations that made the first film such as simple joy. It is a one-sided mess of filth without any redeeming value. The first and last ten minutes are truly funny but the middle seventy minutes is an utter failure. If one has seen the trailer, they have seen about 90% of all the funny parts of the film. I really wanted to like Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and was so looking forward to the sequel, but I’m sorely disappointed by the final product.
