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I love to watch things which are really funny. This is why I generally avoid Comedies like the plague. Because people who try to make movies specifically to be funny, with VERY rare exception, are the least funny people in the world. Go watch, say... American Pie 7 and tell me you honestly laughed at anything for example. Movies from other genres, often funny. Comedies though? Pretty much never. Occasionally a good black comedy like Death to Smoochy will slip under the radar, but you never really hear much about them. Anyway, today I'm making an exception out of morbid curiosity, and watching Hot Tub Time Machine. We have an underused sci-fi premise which hopefully should shift some attention away from making jokes about farts, and I mean... it's called Hot Tub Time Machine. That's like Engrish T-shirt randomness. There's titles that show no creativity... this isn't even one of those. This is just insane. Oh, and boobs in the opening credits. Photographs from the 1800's still count!
So let's see. Characters. We've got black guy, he has a sucky job at a dog spa. We've got John "I was in all those 80s comedies that blend together" Cussack. He just got divorced. We've got fat guy who is apparently his son. He's playing Second Life and his character is in prison and his other friends are saying dude what's wrong with you playing an online game where you're stuck in jail and not being some big ol' orc warrior or something. OK, that's approaching actual humor. Then we have Rob "I was on the Daily Show" Courdry, who is a drunken loser. He's also playing one of those in this movie. Anyway, they are going to go up to a ski resort because they're all kinda bummed. And here's a real quick urine joke. Anyway, when they get to the ski resort, the town is kinda abandoned. I guess nobody raced Chad to save the youth center. Oh, and Black Guy is named Webber Agnu. Congratulations! You've earned the rare treat of me using your actual name from here out! Also here is a bellhop with one arm played by George McFly. I guess... there was an unproduced 4th movie where HE went back in time and didn't fix his parents up in time and his arm was unmade. Or he lost it in an accident.
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Anyway, everyone gets in the hot tub behind their room and start drinking heavily and hallucinating. Here is a guy in a bear suit. Eventually though, presumably because someone spelled their Mysterious Illegal Russian Red Bull Knockoff on the controls, they have time travelled. Here is some vomit. Now they are skiing and Kickstart My Heart is playing in the background. How dare you try and give me a possible negative connotation for that song movie! I've spent the last week blaring it over the car radio in Brutal Legend! Oh good it stopped before anything lame happened. This is to establish that it has become The 80's. Here is some neon clothing! Here is a giant cell phone! Here is MTV! Here is Safety Dance! Here is Alf! Here is Reagan! Here is Super Mario Bros! Here is a cassette player! Here is Where's the Beef! Here is... someone verifying that they're in the past by asking what color Michael Jackson is... but uh. Wait, didn't this movie come out like, 2 months ago? I guess he was still alive when they wrote it and it's a hard joke to replace. Anyway, after working this out, they happen to catch a mirror and see their past selves, except for the fat kid who hadn't been born yet, on noticing this he starts flickering.
Now oh hey, here's some actual humor! "I write Stargate fan fiction so I know how this sorta works!" Then Agnu suddenly has the epiphany that Terminator is about a stable time loop, not that that has anything to do with anything. Now they get interrupted though by Chevy Chase doing a cameo as some kind of magical repair man guy but he doesn't really stick around long enough to give any exposition. Now they're all talking about the whole butterfly effect thing. "What if we stop on a bug and the internet is never invented?" "What if I'm never born?" "Eh, that one doesn't really concern me that much."So yeah, they're going to attempt to not change anything. Here's Fat Kid's past-mom! She is 80's style and a coke snorting slut! Here's one armed bellhop ice sculpting and juggling his chainsaw. Is this how he loses his arm? Why of course not. Anyway, plot. This is apparently the day when John Cussack broke up with his girlfriend at the time and got stabbed in the temple with a fork, then went and conceived Fat Kid with Slutty there. He doesn't really wanna do that again. Rob meanwhile has to pick a fight with some dudes. Doh. Meanwhile, Agnu is having sex with some girl in a bathtub and feels conflicted because he's married in the future. Here is the band Poison. Remember them? No? Well that's probably why they were willing to be in this movie.
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Now here is Rob Courdry's naked butt. Thanks movie, I totally needed to see that. Let's have more nerdy time travel humor and less random nudity. Oh hey, here's an extra thing of humor: Where does it say bla bla in the friendship handbook about bla? Oh yeah? Well what does it say in the asshole handbook about screwing over your friends? Actually, that's the sort of thing that WOULD be in the asshole handbook. Oh hey you're right, good point. Also here's another is this how he loses his arm gag. Also here's everyone just going you know what? @#$% it. Let's change the past! Also here's Chad (who may not be called that but it's a ski resort in the 80's and he's a jerk in charge. He's Chad) going through their stuff, and assuming they are russian spies due to their iPhone and cans of Russian energy drink and stuff. Anyway, John manages to get properly broken up and stabbed despite himself, meanwhile Rob is all "Let's cause Manimal not to get cancelled and prevent the birth of Miley Cyrus and win thousands of dollars betting on sports!" Again. More of this movie. Nobody's ever really done the change the past thing as a comedy movie. Precious few have in other media. Those who have met with great success! Fry is his own grandfather and we loved it! And... betting on the superbowl fails, because a squirrel was in the hot tub with them, somehow made its way to the stadium, and distracted the players into acting differently. See, that's good. There are some funny bits in this movie. Bury them under less sleaze and we're good!
So... low brow, low brow, low brow, suggestion that Magical Repair Man might just be some crazy guy saying things that coincidentally sound like he knows stuff about time travel. That's fairly amusing really. Now here's Agnu pulling a Back to the Future by singing a song he otherwise would not be singing in this context. Although still a song from the appropriate period. Just he was originally singing a lame song that bombed. NOW he's singing a future song. Gansta rap. Oh hey, bear suit again. Now here's Fat Kid hitting on some girl and realizing that without cell phones e-mail or instant messengers he doesn't know how to get back in touch with people, which... is a really bad joke because he's the one character who just wants to get back to the future as quickly as possible and not keep himself from being born. Meanwhile Rob is trying to shout prophecies at people but doing the math wrong. "John Lenin gets shot!" They also apparently have to get their McGuffin drink back to return to the future, possibly with some time limit. Here's everyone almost falling off a roof but being saved by the incredible strength of Bellhop's arm.
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Now here's everyone screwing up. Here's Agnu getting drunk and calling his future wife to yell at her for cheating on him one time, with much swearing. It's funny because she's 9. Also, here's Rob fathering Fat Kid. He bursts in on him though, and stops him, causing him to blink out of existence. Oh whoops. So everyone has to drop their quest to get energy drink back from Chad. He re-exists and is angry. Anyway, Chad saw Red Dawn too many times and refuses to relinquish the can. Rob is forced to fight him to get it back, but... he kinda totally can't fight. So it takes several attempts. Then Chekov's Arm there is randomly sheered off by a passing snow plow. Oh, and John Cussack is Fat Kid's UNCLE, being the brother of Slutty there. THAT'S why they didn't know who his father was while still hanging out with a kid half their age they don't generally like. Aha. Anyway, Rob decides to stay in the 80's and make his life more awesome.
This totally works and he becomes rich and famous and awesome, and arranges for everyone else's life to also end up awesome... and Agnu's wife never cheats on him thanks to the trauma of the horrible phone call she got at the age of 9. And he founds Google and Motley Crue somehow. I don't believe the timing on that works out. So yeah. That was only mildly intolerable. There were maybe... 10 minutes of genuinely clever humor tucked away in it? That's way way better than nearly every comedy movie made since the activation of the Ghostbusters curse. Still way less than, oh, the average horror movie, but hey. This experiment went fairly OK. Now it's back to creepy CGI weirdness and low budget Japanese horror. And maybe some decent movies I won't ramble about mixed in there.
