Movie Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

I absolultely, positively cannot recommend "Hot Tub Time Machine." I cannot tell you that I started laughing during the first scene and did not stop until the credits roll. I certainly won't tell you how the guy sitting behind me almost had an aneurysm from laughing so hard. I can't say that almost every minute of the movie was spot-on and that I would watch it again tonight if I could.

Why can't I recommend it? Because it is possibly the most disgusting movie I've seen to date. Let's start with swear words. There are 517 f-bombs in the film. Kidding...Seriously, do you think I counted? No, silly, I was laughing too hard. But extrapolating and doing the math, 517 seems like a conservative estimate. They drink. They use drugs. Everything from cocaine to mushrooms, but they're miraculously clearheaded twenty minutes later, about when in real life they'd be headed for the E.R. There are multiple sex scenes...mostly funny, but still uncomfortable. Nudity, you bet. Several times of hairy male buttocks....images I can never get out of my brain. Several gags revolve around sex acts you can't mention in a family paper, or family web site. And body fluids.

You know you're in for a wild ride when in the opening, there's an improper self-removal of a catheter.

You know that nagging worry that the funniest moments of a comedy are in the trailer and it's SO not funny for the other 87 minutes? That's not the case here. The trailer is simply the parts that would be allowed to be shown on TV under decency rules. All three minutes of them. 

Years ago, there was a TV network, PAX, that would edit out swearing and "offensive" material from TV and movies and air the sanitized and shortened versions. The trailer is the PAX version of the film. In its entirety.

The story follows three old friends, Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson) and Lou (Rob Corddry). Their adult lives have not lived up the the promise of earlier days. They remember their 80s debauchery at a ski resort with fondness. After an apparent suicide attempt by Lou, the three head back to the mountain. For reasons I don't quite recall (I was probably laughing too hard), they bring Adam's nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) along.

The resort is a now a run-down dump manned by a bitter one-armed bellboy. More on him later. Uncountable beers later, and with the help of some illegal Russian energy drink, Chernolblee, the hot tub glows, swirls, and spits them out in 1986. There's also a dude in a bear suit drinking beer. Somehow, it just works.

In 1986, preppy is in, the bellboy has two arms, and Jacob's mom is a slut. The four men resolve to not change a thing, because they don't know what the slightest change will do to the space-time continuum and their futures.

Except their futures suck. Can change be all that bad?

Well, not for the three older guys, at least. Jacob is concerned. He's done the math. He knows he was conceived somewhere around this time. He'd prefer that particular detail to not change.

Does this sound familiar? It should. The film plays as an homage to time travel movies in general, but especially to "Back to the Future." That bellboy? He's played by Crispin Glover, Marty's hapless dad in the Back to the Future franchise. I don't want to give anything away, but his role alone makes you almost loose a spleen from laughing.

Lots of 80s references (Wolverines!), music, and style add to the fun. But in the end, it's a tight script and flawless comedic acting that make this movie never miss a beat. Chevy Chase plays a cryptic hot tub repair man who may or may not be a wise time travel guru. And that dude in a bear suit keeps showing up.

It takes a lot of work to make a movie like this seem so effortless. But I can't recommend it. Seriously. If you go against my recommendation and see it, it's on your head. And certainly, if you think you see me there in the theater, watching for the fifth time, well, I deny it's me. I have a lot of lookalikes.