Hot Tub Time Machine

If my hot tub were a time machine I would gladly hop in and go back in time to before I saw this pointless movie.

Hot Tub Time Machine was dumb, but not in a funny way. Usually when a movie employs stupid humor, there's a satirical edge to it, like in Zoolander when they made fun of the modeling profession, or Idiocracy, where they point out the dumbing down of the entire human race. Hot Tub Time Machine, though, had all the stupidity and none of the humor.

It follows the story of three best friends who have fallen out of touch and become middle aged and miserable. After one of the friends attempts suicide the other two and a nephew take him to a ski resort they all frequented as young adults. They get drunk in a hot tub and are transported back to the 80s to relive the experiences they had.

The F-word in this movie is nothing more than a filler word to use when there's a lull in the dialogue. Even though it has become common now to use crude language in everyday conversation, I thought it brought this film down on the IQ scale. The writers were probably just reflecting the norms of society by trying to copy the sort of dialogue used by teens today. However, movies today are considered memorable or not by the list of funny quotes people remember. If a movie isn't quotable, it isn't memorable and the endless F-bombs and crude language just served to make the movie easily forgettable.

The themes weren't any better. The main storyline revolves around sex, drugs, and partying. The main purpose of life, according to this movie, is to damn the consequences and live for the moment. The three main characters were more focused on fixing what happened in the past, they forgot about what changing the past would mean for the future. The youngest character, the nephew, is the only one who actually cares about getting back to the present, because his friends' actions might make it so he was never born.

John Cusack, the headliner for this film, stayed mostly in the background. He didn't do a noticeably bad job, but he didn't do a noticeably good job either, making his performance mediocre at best. Clark Duke, who played Cusack's nephew Jacob, did pretty well as a sarcastic and awkward teen, which made it a weird transition when his character suddenly became the responsible adult and the only voice of reason in the group.

Rob Corddry, who played the crazy, out of control friend, Lou, did a pretty believable job. I don't know if that means he himself is stupid and crazy, or if he genuinely can act as such. His character had all the pratfalls and funny lines (if any of the lines could be called funny) but I easily got bored with his character doing the same things over and over again.

The only redemption in this movie comes from Craig Robinson's performance as Nick Webber. He brought real emotion, humor, and strength to his part, and his character was the only one who actively changed his future for the better before returning to the present. He changed from the experience and was a better man for it.

I feel less intelligent for having watched this movie. The good parts were not nearly good enough to make up for all the bad, and I ended the night at a loss.