Directed by: Steve Pink
Starring: John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Clark Duke, Craig Robinson, Lizzy Caplan, Chevy Chase, Crispin Glover, Collette Wolfe, Sebastian Stan
Hot Tub Time Machine is a much better time travel comedy than you'd expect. It has some thoughtfulness along with the humor and the gross-out scenes which back in 2010 were almost compulsory in comedies. The plot is rather simple, and has a Hangover vibe. Three longtime buddies travel to a ski resort where they spent a lot of their teenage and young adult years and their hot tub is turned into a time machine by a cryptic repairman (Chase). They buddies, along with the leader Adam's (Cusack) nephew Jacob (Duke), discover that overnight they were transported to 1986.
1986 serves as a touchstone year for these men. Jacob was conceived that year, while Lou (Corddry) was knocked out by a local bully (Stan), Nick (Robinson), whose wife is cheating on him in the present day, realizes he gave up on his dreams of being a singer then, and Adam has a flirtation with a music journalist (Caplan) who could be his one true love. Hot Tub Time Machine has fun with the time travel aspects. It isn't Back to the Future, but not many movies could be. But this movie isn't a raunchfest (raunchiness isn't funny anyway), but it also has a heart.
The comic performances of the cast lend some weight to the proceedings. Hot Tub Time Machine is pretty silly on its surface (most time travel movies are), but in the end, we see one character use the situation not just to financially enrich himself and his friends, but also use it as a chance to grow. I never expected that.
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