Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

You've got to love movies that have really pronounced titles. 'Snakes on a Plane', 'Volcano', 'Fighting', 'Alien vs Predator'. They get to the point. You can find out the plot of the film just by looking at the name. Well, hopefully you can..when I went to see 'Hot Tub Time Machine' I did overhear someone ask the girl at the box office what it was about. Yikes.

Hot Tub Time Machine knows what it is. It's supposed to be stupid. They wanted to come up with one of the dumbest ideas ever and make it funny. They succeeded. What I actually admired most about the film was it actually tried to explain it's actions. It didn't have to, it could've just thrown them out there, but it's nice to see they put some thought into their story. Even though it's completely unbelievable, they still made it passable.

'Time Machine' follows 3 long time friends, and one of those friend's nephew. Adam (John Cusak) has recently split from his long time girlfriend, Jacob (Clarke Duke) is his 20 something nephew that lives in his basement and plays video games all day. Nick (Craig Robinson) was once a great musician and now works for a pet store. Lou (Rob Corddry) is their raging alcoholic "asshole" friend. After a serious situation, the friends decide to go back to an old ski resort where they partied in the 80's only to find it run down and boring. They sit in the hot tub on their patio one night, drinking beer, liquor and an "illegal Russian energy drink" only to find that the Russian drinks mixes into the hot tub and transports them back to 1986. They try to relive that day exactly as they did before so that they don't disturb anything that happens in the future.

The movie was hilarious, I expected it to be a bit funnier, but I was just fine with what I got. Craig Robinson is hilarious, he's one of my favorite comedic actors to watch. He's responsible for the majority of the funny things that happen in this film. It's nice to see John Cusak let go since he's been in a string of absolutely horrible movies for the last few years. My biggest complaint was surprisingly Rob Courdry, he was almost too much. He was over the top and frankly I didn't quite car a whole lot for his character. The film isn't trying to be a masterpiece, it makes fun of itself. There's lots of slapstick, sex jokes, booze, drugs, music (including one hilarious scene with Robinson singing a song from the future) The ending is completely obvious, but it's all in good fun. You start the film laughing and you leave happy.

Recommended: Yes

Grade: B

Memorable Quote: "It looks like Gary Coleman's forearm!" - Lou (Rob Corddry)