"Was it morally wrong for me to exploit my knowledge of the future for personal financial gain? Perhaps. Here's another question. Do I give a fuck?"
-Rob Corddry, as himself
"The best time-traveling hot tub movie of all time!"
-One IMDb reviewer
"A film about four guys who travel from present day to 1986 via a ski lodge hot tub (jacuzzi) is clearly not meant to be taken too seriously. It’s a wacky idea and the humour in the film is meant to be taken for what it is: broad, crass and dumb."
-Thomas Caldwell, The Big Issue
"An educated guess would be that some Hollywood wiseacre came up with the title Hot Tub Time Machine as a half-drunk joke at a party, scored a huge laugh, and then thought, "Hmmm, I've got a killer pitch." [...] To its credit, the film does get away with it, if only in a boozy, ham-fisted, anything-for-a-cheap-laugh kind of way."
-Jim Schrembi, The Age
So goes the hype (and criticism) for the low-concept movie, "Snakes On a Plane "Hot Tub Time Machine," which, frankly, needs no introduction or explanation beyond the title. Three middle-aged guys and their teen sidekick (for lack of a better term) jump into a hot tub which, through a chance of fate and faulty wiring, transports them back into the 80's. Beyond this basic premise and a general appreciation for 80's pop culture, that's about all you really need to know going into it.With many movies, it's simply a matter of viewer expectations. In my last review, what I expected of "Knight and Day" was basically something other than a romantic comedy, and when it turned out to be said genre, much swearing and yelling at Tom Cruise was had. "Hot Tub Time Machine," of course, takes the opposite approach by setting the viewers' expectations low and then finding ways to surpass those expectations.In the Hot Tub's case, what we could have ended up with was something along the lines of another Will Ferrell or (God forbid) Anna Faris-type movie, where the story is more-or-less dominated by the joke rather than any plot or character development. Luckily, the Hot Tub manages to balance the elements of its own R-rated farce with some genuine drama.
Albeit much of this drama is wasted on some middle-aged guys trying to reclaim their lost youth. However, if nothing else, the film does stick consistently with this theme, and it does give one potential answer to the age-old question, "What if I could go back in time and tap that ass?" Or, "What if I could go back in time and kick that guy's ass?" Or, "What if I could go back in time and do a rock solo so they would realize how awesome the music of the future is?"One of the Hot Tub's strengths is its nods to the decade in which the characters find themselves trapped. The soundtrack alone is basically a tribute to that innocent time before rock and rap artists starting raging at everyone and everything, and the movie manages to balance the raunchier, cynical humor of today's movies with that more idealistic feel and sense of heart those movies of the 80's tended to have. Hell, one of the main characters is John Cusack, one of the whitest guys around and someone you couldn't get the hell away from in the 80's!The actors play off each other and their timewarp situation rather well. The banter between the characters probably isn't the stuff of Shakespeare, but it fits their situation well and manages to generate some good laughs. Rob Corddry channels his typical "douche" character while playing up his mid-life crisis and driving the plot, while Craig Robinson (best known as "that guy from The Office") counterbalances him as the happily-married man trying not to preemptively break his wedding vow, and John Cusack drives the more "emotional" subplot. Clark Duke joins them as the typical computer geek from the future, scrambling to undo the time travel and return to the future.
One notable appearance is Chevy Chase, better known as another one of the whitest guys you would see back in the 80's, who would always manage to be doggedly unfunny while going on those National Lampoon-sponsored vacations every other year, it seemed. Here, he plays the repairman sent to fix the Hot Tub, and here, he manages to push all those vacations in his past and approach something called "humor."I would honestly say that this movie's main strength is simply its sense of how to tell a joke. One thing to keep in mind when telling a joke is to keep the audience guessing. This is 2010, where the audience can see the punch line coming from a mile away. The element of surprise is this movie's surprise (lol!) main advantage: we don't know how the characters' plans will end (although you can guess), we don't know how their shenanigans will turn out, and in fact the nature of time itself bends over backwards to keep the audience guessing. That, my friends, is the secret to comedy. (Just ask Seth MacFarlane.)So, overall, is "Hot Tub Time Machine" a good movie? Well, it goes beyond the audience's expectations while still managing to surprise them at each turn. It balances out the cynicism found in today's movies with an underlying theme of hope (assuming you consider "hope" to be going back in time to kick someone's ass). And, for once, it gets that darn Chevy Chase to stop going on vacations and start fixing hot tubs again. If that doesn't make for a good movie, I don't know what does.
Note: The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer, with a surprising amount of insight into determining the outcomes of sports games, with a specific focus on horse races. He has used this to build his multi-million dollar fortune from the ground up. Hmmm...it's almost like he always knows who's going to win...
"You stay here, I'm going to go talk to those guys in the tunnel... Actually, I'm going to go kill them."
-Tom Cruise, as himself
"Need help, what's a good word to describe Tom's Character?"
"Ethan Hunt with a good sense of humor."
"The words 'douche' and 'tard' come to mind..."
-One interesting IMDb discussion
"The duo emit no whiff of mingled sexual musk as they collide. Yet here the pair are, fatefully bound together by predicaments she didn't ask for (which only partly accounts for why she shrieks so girlishly in extremis), and which he doesn't have time to explain as he kills bad guys with ostensibly amusing efficiency. At least they're not Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher in Killers."
-Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly, discussing the importance of timing
“Spy movies haven’t been the same since the Bourne movies came along. Even James Bond sat up and took notice, but Knight & Day is an adventure movie that pretends Jason Bourne never woke up with amnesia. Instead it revels in being a fluffy throwback to the early 007 days (the Connery and Moore years) but without the gadgets, or even the action-adventures of the '80s that thrived on the debonair-hero-and-hapless-heroine -along-for-the-ride formula of Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Romancing The Stone.”
Matt Neal, The Standard
Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise join forces (if you know what I mean) to fight off murderous secret agents, evade assassins, blaze through gunfire, walk away from exploding buildings (and helicopters, and a commercial airplane) without looking, and get back in time for Miss "Day's" wedding, all while discovering that all they need is love, in the 2010 spy romp known as "Knight and Day."
In case you're wondering, no, I did not pay to get in, because I went with a very generous group, which consisted of me, some obviously female friends, and one very generous chaperone of theirs. In case you're wondering, I was drawn to the movie by Tom Cruise's charm, which...
Wait, I didn't mean...
Like the last movie I reviewed, "Knight and Day" is a vehicle for a movie star who has fallen from grace as of late. In Stallone's case, it was the result of both his questionable decisions with the Rocky franchise and...well, "Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot." In Tom Cruise's case, his fall from grace was signaled by him going on Oprah and proceeding to act like...hmmm...the words "douche" and "tard" come to mind. (L. Ron Hubbard certainly hasn't helped matters much either.) Stallone, of course, was able to redeem himself with his updates of the Rocky and Rambo franchises, and by teaming up with nearly a dozen badasses in one movie. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise was able to redeem himself by trying to kill Hitler.
If you're wondering what on earth drew me to this movie, I'll admit that I'm into "spy" movies, and comedies. So when I saw the trailers for this spy comedy featuring a batshit crazy Tom Cruise disarming a plane full of enemy spies, exchanging banter with a bewildered Cameron Diaz in the middle of a car chase, and sheepishly admitting that he intends to "shoot them" instead of engaging in polite conversation with the people out to kill him, I thought to myself, "Well, this looks like an interesting and hilarious movie featuring a quirky, possibly insane scientologist actor who has finally decided to embrace his quirky insanity and play it up for all it's worth. Certainly more promising than that strangely similar movie from three weeks before. I look forward to this movie of quirks and insanity."
Apparently I don't have the most discerning eye when it comes to trailers, which is how I ended up watching a...*shudder*...romantic comedy. It has equal parts "romance" and "comedy," but still, not what I was expecting. To say that I’m against romance (even badly-written romance) altogether is an inaccurate assumption. However, to say that I’m against a romantic plot that ends up consuming the movie as a whole hits the nail on the head. Is it the marketing department’s fault that I saw this less as a globe-trotting romantic adventure and more…well, something else? Well, as they say, “Fool me once, shame on you, Tom Cruise. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
A good deal of my criticism comes from measuring this movie against what I expected it to be. Since it’s essentially a spy romp anyway, I wasn’t expecting it to stray too far from the tried-and-true action adventure formula. However, I wasn’t expecting the “good guys” and “bad guys” to be so easily delineated from one another. Why can’t that ever be left to the viewer’s imagination anymore? Agent Knight’s character arc would have been more interesting if the viewer had been left in the dark as to whether or not he was supposed to be a sympathetic character. Considering Cameron Diaz’s character was thrown right in the middle of Cruise's mad race against time and enemy spies, I’m willing to admit that they played this mystery up for all it was worth in the first few acts of the movie. However, I think Hollywood in general fails to appreciate the importance of maintaining a certain level of mystique and ambiguity, especially now that the superhero craze lately has given us an influx of just plain “good” vs. “evil” characters. Nothing’s ever left to mystery anymore.
There is chemistry between the two lead characters. From the first few scenes in the airport, you can see the budding attraction between their characters, as June is swept up into a separate, deadlier world from our own, with Agent Knight acting as a sort of guardian angel for her as they race from country to country. From the IMDb discussion quoted above, one scene comes to mind, specifically the car chase where Cruise is essentially coaching Diaz through a deadly car chase, as “Roy quietly helps June out of the car with a soft voice, and leads her behind the car, all the time reassuring her that she was doing good and complimenting her dress as you hear bullets ricocheting every which way.” In other words, yes, chicks are still allowed to fall in love in Tom Cruise.
Of course, you would think getting shot at all the time would outweigh whatever attraction is being kindled. Part of the appeal of this movie is watching these two characters from two different worlds interact and slowly grow closer, but the old saying about opposites attracting flies out the window when you have a possibly insane, crazy-skilled black ops agent (with some stalker-ish tendencies, as the beach scene in the middle of the movie attests to) lugging around an admittedly attractive blonde who has no business in the cloak-and-dagger business and who basically seems to be slowing him down. Yes, I can see the sexual attraction and all, but at what point do these two personalities actually click?
In fact, I think Jean Grey said it best: "Wolverine is the bad boy who sweeps the girl off her feet. Cyclops is the guy girls settle down with and marry." Or something to that effect.
The action, as you’d imagine, is where it’s at. From the scene on the airplane, to the car chases, to the gunfights, the action scenes are exquisitely filmed. As usual with the big blockbuster flicks these days, the cinematography does take its cues from the Bourne series, with several close-up shots to keep things almost needlessly intense. However, unlike my “Expendables” review last week, these scenes are still enough to give you a general sense of tension, as well as…you know, a sense of where the scene is going, as opposed to…what was it I said about the Sly-dog? “Shit blowing up"? (Considering they probably weren't willing to give Cruise access to high-grade explosives, that's to be expected...)
So overall, is "Knight and Day" a good movi...oh, fuck it, I hated it. I hated the idea that anyone could fall for its lead. I hated the idea that his mild-mannered co-star was made for him, as much as he was made for her. I hated that I'd gotten stuck in a romantic comedy with a room full of middle-aged women. I hated the prospect of getting suckered into a movie like this. Hated the insult that I was supposed to root for Agent Ethan Hunt Tom Cruise Knight over any of the other agents. Hated the ten bucks I spent in concessions, and the long, awkward ride back home as everyone else in the car said it "wasn't that bad." Do you really want me to say it? Fine. Fine, I'll say it. It...*shudder*...wasn't that bad...
Note: The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer who will be forced to watch the Sex and the City movies for next week. Seriously, Brewsky, you think that was bad? We will make good on our threat if you don't stop with the swearing. Our readers don't come here to read "F" this and "Sh**" that...
"If this movie doesn't beat 'Eat, Pray, Love,' YOU. DON'T. DESERVE. TO BE. A. MAN."
-One notable YouTube trailer
Co Bao: "Why did they pick you? Because you like to fight?"
Rambo: "I'm expendable."
First Blood Part II, making a title drop nearly three decades early
"Despite the hype and the opening releases, all The Expendables proves is that the world has moved on since the 1990's when Stallone was putting the final touches to his reign as action king and what worked then doesn't necessarily work now."
-Tymon Smith, Times LIVE
"[Stallone] is still working under the tradition of the action B-movies that flourished [...] in the 80's and early 90's and still employing legions of stunt actors and explosives riggers in the service of his vision, which is an old and durable one that bad guys need killing. You can't exactly say that he has aged gracefully, but grace has never been part of Stallone's appeal."
-A.O. Scott, The New York Times
So goes the hype (and criticism) for Stallone's latest big-budget, testosterone-fueled, beat-'em-up, shoot-'em-up, and (just for good measure) blow-'em-up, action star team-'em-up known as "The Expendables," which teams up Sly with Jason Statham, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Jet Li, and...some other action "stars" I've never come across before...as a team of gun-toting, fire-shooting, knife-throwing, body-slamming, neck-snapping, skull-shattering, Harley-ridin' badasses who, despite their status as under-the-radar thugs for hire who have probably been dishonorably discharged by more covert agencies and black ops organizations than you've probably even heard of, are anything but expendable.
I'll spare you the plot breakdown, because even if you're not part of the "Eat, Pray, Love" crowd who thinks these fine, upstanding mercenaries might have anger issues, you're still probably just wondering if this movie is any good, or if it happens to be...expendable? (ha ha, rly funny lol!)
Well, this movie is not without its flaws. For one thing, you can kind of tell that this is a Stallone vehicle about five minutes in; the Sly-dog has a habit of making things "bigger and badder." In Rocky II the title hero takes on Apollo Creed in a rematch, while the sequels saw him in a fight with Mr. T, a fish-out-of-water wrestling match with Hulk Hogan, and his vengeance bout against the Soviet juggernaut Ivan Drago. In First Blood, the Sly-dog's other alter ego is pitted against some local cops; in the sequel he's practically taking on the Viet Cong single-handed. (With arrows! That explode!)
I suppose this escalation of arms isn't necessarily a bad thing (otherwise the prospect of half a dozen action stars teaming up in one movie wouldn't be marketable), but the "warning shot" at the beginning is a sign of things to come. Midway through, Sly and Statham (hogging a good twenty or thirty minutes of this chunk of the plot) have to fight their way off the island. The climax, of course, is a demonstration of what happens when you take six guys as badass as them and pit them against one very pissed-off army.
The climax, of course, is as explosive as you'd expect. In fact, there are almost too many explosions. When it comes down to the final shoot-'em-up against the bad guys, it suffers from both a combination of the constant explosions and the need filmmakers have nowadays to shoot a sort of pseudo-documentary, where everything is in close-up, the camera's constantly shaking, and you can't tell what's going on. One could argue that this reflects the chaotic nature of warfare (which is a more realistic take than, say, Rambo blazing through an army of faceless Viet Cong to his own adventurous background music), but the result is that you can't tell who's fighting who, and you can't care about who's kicking ass, who's getting his ass kicked, who's getting shot, who's getting blown up, whose upper or lower body just ceased to exist...
Is this movie "politically correct?" No, not by a long shot. The women are weak and need protecting from the big strong men, and the antagonists (with the exception of the slimy corporate "owner" of the island and his bodyguard) are all faceless foreign soldiers. The characters resort to excessive force to solve their problems (especially if Drago 2.0's method of dealing with a hostage situation is anything to go by), rather than...oh, using "non-excessive" force like Jason Bourne. Or trying to commit suicide like a certain "female role model."
That being said, there is a heart underneath it all (though these guys wouldn't admit to it, as no guy ever should...). There are scenes, mostly toward the beginning and in the middle, which are used to develop these persons of mass destruction. Don't get me wrong, it's still "character development" in a movie about persons of mass destruction, but it's something. They eat, they drink, they have kids and women on the side, they worry about their next paycheck, they love, they hurt, they cry. It's a movie for guys, about guys, including how we deal with our buddies sometimes. We hang out, we laugh, we talk about our women, we cr...cry...sometimes...we fight over whose knife is bigger and who can throw it better, and when we get pissed off, we fight to show the other guy who's boss. It's a guy thing. And then you get over it, you drink it off and ten minutes later you're laughing about it again.
There is a focus on certain members of the Expendables team over others. As you might expect, the big names get a lot of the screen time, with Jason Statham and the Sly-dog himself probably getting the most scenes. Stone Cold, Jet Li, and to a lesser extent Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke have some scene focus, with...those other guys getting shafted. This is probably to be expected, though; would you really expect a mixed martial artist or whoever that guy with the big mook-exploding gun is to carry a scene on their own? You might notice I didn't mention Schwarzenegger or Willis, but their roles are reduced to cameos anyway, since the Governator is running California, and Bruce Willis had other business to attend to.
So overall, is "The Expendables" a good movie? Yes. Is it a great movie? No. Let's face it, the Sly-dog and his counterparts back in the 80's did the same thing in the middle of a jungle, by themselves, with no backup, no iPods or means of escape, no remote-controlled C4 detonators or Head-and-Torso-Removal Apparati. On that criterion alone, this movie can't be considered "great." But is it a good movie? Yes. Yes it is.
Note: The Brewsky is an enthusiastic contributor and movie reviewer, and the views expressed here (especially the nice things he said about the movie) are those of his affiliates and sponsors. Whatever he was reviewing, it was a good, good movie. Hey, you can stop holding that gun to my head now. No need to waste a bullet.
