The Brewhaha on..."Hot Tub Time Machine"

"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...