Review: Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

[Tim Skirvin]

  One of my favorite 80s screwball comedies was _Better Off Dead_.  It
was a cute, silly, essentially-pointless John Cusack vehicle about breakups
and skiing; it managed to end up with a half dozen good, quotable scenes
intermixed with a plot that barely deserved the title.  It's a fun, foolish
movie that was popular enough to be parodized on South Park a few years
back, but otherwise doesn't appear to have impinged on the American
consciousness for a while now...  or at least that's what I thought until
the first trailers for _Hot Tub Time Machine_ came out.  

  Sadly, _Hot Tub Time Machine_ is not _Better Off Dead 2: The Wrath
of Rob Corddry_.  

  That isn't to say that there are no connections; indeed, how could
you otherwise create a movie at a ski resort that both starring and
produced by John Cusack?  At points, the movie even seemed to make the
connection for the audience - what else could the cry of "two dollars"
mean?  But instead of really being a riff on 80s comedies, we got an attempt
at a modern buddy-sex comedy (ala _The Hangover_).  And in that, it really
didn't do a great job.

  For all of that, I can't say that I was particularly
*disappointed*.  I did laugh pretty regularly.  The self-referential
geekiness was endearing; the use of the actor that played Marty McFly's
father in the _Back to the Future_ series was extremely cute.  I was
impressed with Craig Robinson (I'm never going to think of him as anything
else but Darryl from The Office), and was happy to see Rob Corddry even if
he was playing the same character as ever.  I got a kick out of geeky
20-year-old.  And Chevy Chase was cute.

  Still...  I would have been happier with something *more*
self-referential.  Why didn't we just see John Cusack going back in time
with his friends to re-create _Better Off Dead_ directly?  Why didn't they
play up the various genres of 80s comedy more clearly?  And, generally, why
couldn't the creators have come up with something clever enough that
somebody would think to reference it 25 years later?  

  ** 1/2

                           - Tim Skirvin (tskirvin at killfile.org)
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