The only question you’ll have after suffering through John Cusack’s soulless and forced “Hot Tub Time Machine” is what was uglier: the characters, tone, set design or cinematography? What a waste of a good title, and what an even bigger waste of a winning concept. A raucous time travel comedy about a group of forty-somethings given the opportunity to go back to 1986 and fix all the mistakes that set their lives on the path to quiet desperation sounds like a crude but nostalgic and heartwarming can’t miss. But miss it does, and by a wide mark, thanks to shoddy plotting and characters impossible to root for.
Director Steve Pink gathers the usual archetypes for this kind of thing. Cusack plays Adam, a business man whose girlfriend just moved out on him and his twenty-something nephew Jacob (Clark Duke), a basement dwelling, videogame geek; Nick (Craig Roberson), who had musical aspirations but ended up under the thumb of his wife; and Lou (Rob Corddry), a foul-mouthed, gonzo party guy who can’t get over the fact that the party ended when Adam and Nick stopped coming around.
After Lou is hospitalized for what might or might not have been a suicide attempt, the three disparate and now distant friends (with young Jacob in tow) decide to rekindle their relationship and lick some wounds with a nostalgic trip back to a ski resort where they hope to forget their problems through the magic of reliving those alcohol, drug and free-sex debauchery days that made high school the high point of their lives.
Eventually, as the title promises, the four men end up in a hot tub that takes them back to 1986 where they (and we) see themselves and each other as grown men, but everyone else sees them as the teenagers they once were. Aided only by a cryptic hot tub repairman (a thankless role for Chevy Chase) who appears and disappears in a joke that gets stale real quick, for the next ninety minute the three friends relive one fateful night as they try to figure out a way back to 2010.
“Hot Tub” desperately wants to be “The Hangover,” and while there are a few laughs, thanks only to Rob Corddry’s frenzied but hapless Lou, for the most part, again and again, you feel the script strain to create the kind of vulgar iconic moments these films always aim for. But the situations here are too obviously contrived to earn honest laughs, and where “The Hangover” was seamlessly told with a genius plot structure that had big laughs building upon bigger laughs, “Hot Tub” is content to lumber from one scene to the next like a sketch show that’s loosely tied together.
**SPOILERS COMING**
The charmless story makes it impossible to root for these guys (and the supporting gals — who are portrayed as sluts, stupid, or both). There’s nothing redeemable about any of them. And this doesn’t change as the story develops. You’re expecting someone to wake up and figure out that they’re their own worst enemy — that’s it’s time to grow up, stop the pity party, and come to the realization that life doesn’t owe you anything. Instead, the moral of the story is the complete opposite.
HTTM is soulless because as you’re exiting the theatre you realize it’s not about anything other than four narcissists getting everything they want. The story’s emotional center is only about achieving pleasure, not happiness, and obtaining wealth, sex and drugs are portrayed as worthy goals. If there’s any kind of moral, it’s to stick with and enable your loser high school buddies no matter how degenerate and immature they are. Cusack’s character is given a shallow love story but the quirky pretty girl with the big eyes and offbeat answers to life’s questions is long past becoming a cliche deserving a stake through the heart.
The pervasive ugliness that emanates from the film’s every pore is largely the result of that cynical, hip, smarter-than-thou attitude that infects way too many movies these days. It’s a lazy way for filmmakers to avoid the hard work of pulling off sentiment but it also reflects a rancid Hollywood culture trying to sell their own sense of nihilism as some kind of virtue. This may be the first movie where our protagonists travel back to their youth and never once experience even a moment of wistful nostalgia. The film sneers at everything 1986, from the fashions to the metal bands. And naturally the story’s rich preppie bullies all worship “Red Dawn” and see communists ’round every corner.
The production is so cheap looking nostalgia would’ve been impossible anyway. Nothing feels like the mid-80s. Considering the wealth of material at their disposal (remember how “The Wedding Singer” did such a great job transporting us back?), the song choices are awful, the fashions look and feel like they came straight from studio wardrobe, and the locations are horribly under-lit and have the closed-in feel of a Lifetime Movie.
Other than a very funny subplot involving Crispin Glover’s missing arm, “Hot Tub Time Machine” is just too cool for the rest of us.
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