Hot Tub Time Machine

Last year as I sat in the theater watching The Hangover, a sobering and frightening thought occurred to me. Considering how wildly popular and successful that movie was, how soon would it be before movie studios saw the R-rated male buddy-movie as a money-making machine and started throwing out lazy, stupid comedies every couple of months or so? I mean, it's because of the success of Scary Movie that we later would up with Meet the Spartans. That's almost enough to make me hate the mere existence of Scary Movie, even though I enjoyed the movie. The trailers for Hot Tub Time Machine looked amusing enough, but that doubt crept right back into my mind. "This is it... the first rip-off of The Hangover," I thought. Then I saw that the movie was directed by Steve Pink, the director of Accepted, and I cringed. Would John Cusack, who has saved many a bad movie in his day, be able to save this?

Happily, the answer to that question is no. No, he's not able to save it alone. He doesn't need to. Hot Tub Time Machine is a fantastically silly comedy that knows every bit how ridiculous its premise is and runs with it with an infectious earnestness. And it's a movie that is successful because its four lead actors carry this movie even in the parts where the jokes seem to be oddly spaced apart and lacking in the freshness department. Cusack plays Adam, a guy that makes a solid living at work but can't seem to get his personal life together. We find him at the beginning of the film coming home after his ex-girlfriend has moved out and taken her things (the things not marked with a red sticker, which include an empty plastic bottle and Adam himself) with her, even going as far as to snatch his TV. Adam's nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), lives in his basement. Jacob is the full embodiment of the nerd stereotype. He hasn't seen the sunlight in probably a few weeks, and is introduced serving a jail sentence in the game Second Life because he feels such a connection to his avatar that he needs to serve hard time with it. Adam's former best friend is Nick (Craig Robinson), a man that is absolutely controlled by his wife, Courtney (Kellee Stewart), to the point that he hyphenates his last name to add her's. Though Adam and Nick have grown apart over the years, Adam is still the first person that Nick calls when he finds out that their childhood friend, Lou (Rob Corddry), has tried to kill himself by revving his car inside a closed garage. As Adam puts it, Lou was their asshole. Despite Lou's insistence that he didn't try to kill himself, Adam and Nick decide to take Lou to the ski resort where they had some of their best weekends growing up. They drag Jacob along reluctantly and arrive to find that the resort is mostly shuttered and in considerable disrepair. The group is put up in the same room they stayed in back in the 80's, and decide to hop in the hot tub that's out on their deck after they call maintenance (in the form of a mysterious repair man played by Chevy Chase) to come fix it. After drinking a considerable amount, something happens to the machine and it transports them to 1986. The repair man casually mentions to them that they shouldn't step on any butterflies, so Lou, Nick, and Adam realize that they need to replay that day exactly as they had in the past. Meanwhile, Jacob hadn't been born until 1987, so any serious missteps could result in his not being born at all.

From there, the movie tends to be somewhat predictable, which is probably the one thing that separates it from The Hangover. The situations in this movie play out in a way that you see coming, while The Hangover took what you were expecting and turned it on its head, laughing at you while it did it. That's not to say that Hot Tub Time Machine doesn't get the joke. In the biggest wink and nod of the movie, as the group are trying to figure out exactly what happened, Nick realizes the situation and informs the group that it, "Must be some sort of... hot tub time machine," as he pauses and stares directly through the fourth wall at the audience. Sure, the movie has its fill of dick jokes, vomit humor, nudity, foul language, and fairly graphic and gratuitous depictions of drug use throughout. In a sense though, I felt that the writers knew that it was expected that the movie contained those things and they made sure to play them up to a level that was absurd in its own right. To be sure, this is a movie that will offend the easily offended, quickly desensitize you to the f-word, and turn your stomach in parts if you're made queasy by bodily fluids. You should know these things going into it.

Despite some of those shortcomings, the movie delivers when it comes to perhaps the most important facet: the chemistry between the four main characters. To be blunt, I enjoyed these characters more than I did the main foursome from The Hangover. Cusack plays the affable loser to perfection, and he should. It's a role he's built a career off of, going way back to Say Anything. Though the movie's humor is more raunchy than anything else he's done, he doesn't seem at all unnatural in that role. The beauty of Cusack as an actor is that he very easily blends into his characters. Part of that is talent and part of it is the roles he's chosen. He picked the right role for him in this movie. Robinson pulls off a less angry version of the character he played in Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and it's pretty clear that he can pull off the second banana role very well. If Cusack's Adam is the affable loser who seems dismayed at his station is life, Robinson's Nick is the loser who has given in to it and accepted it. He loves his wife and though he's certain she's cheating on him and the fact that since they're in 1986 and he's not married yet, he can't fathom the thought of paying her back. Duke is probably the weak link out of the quartet, but he brings a natural ease to Jacob. He looks every bit the nerd and plays it off with an almost indignant aloofness. Jacob is the loser that doesn't see anything wrong with being a loser.

The real gem in this movie is Corddry, who brings such a natural and sincere earnestness to Lou. Lou is the loser who has no idea that he's a loser despite how offensive and pathetic he may be to everyone around him. Corddry takes that role and makes it lovable. That's not an easy task. It's the same sensibility that he used to bring to The Daily Show, and it completely shines through here. Lou's character is the hardest sell of the four. He's not a nice guy. He's a complete screw-up. He cares about his friends, but shows it in completely destructive ways. He's a non-functioning alcoholic, and almost immediately starts into cocaine once they arrive at the resort. He's the thirty-something that has no idea that the party ended a decade ago and is floundering in search of it. To make that character likable, and beyond that, to make that character the emotional focus of the movie (and I use that term loosely) is not an easy feat. Corddry doesn't just pull it off. He pulls it off so convincingly that I couldn't imagine not liking the guy. The man's going to be a very, very successful comedic actor. He has the same gravity that fellow Daily Show alum Steve Carell has. Even if he doesn't wind up being that big of a star, he's every bit as funny.

Sitting in the theater watching Hot Tub Time Machine, a comforting thought occurred to me. Maybe, just maybe, having studios try to mimic the success that The Hangover had isn't such a bad thing. As long as they're as consistently funny as Hot Tub Time Machine was and they present a cast as likable and convincing, that's not at all a negative. In fact, we should be really happy that studios have shifted back to making smarter, character driven comedies (potty humor or no) rather than falling back on cheap dreck that generally passed for comedy a decade ago. Of course, the buddy comedy version of Meet the Spartans could still be right around the corner. Here's to crossing my fingers.