If you're going to name your movie Hot Tub Time Machine you're setting up an expectation for a very high degree of silliness and comedy. A degree that this movie only achieves occasionally and never for a sustained period of time. It's still funny and oftentimes fun, but never consistently and seems to hold itself back from being as silly as it should be.
Three old friends leading miserable middle-aged lives, and the nephew of one of them, decide to take a vacation to a mountain resort where they'd shared some good times 25 years ago. Once there, they discover that the old place isn't what it used to be, but after an accident with their Hot Tub and a Russian energy drink, they wake up inside the bodies of the younger selves in 1986. Cautioned by a mysterious Hot Tub repairman played by Chevy Chase to not change anything, the group sets out to relive some moments from their past.
A story like that could go either one of two ways. It could be an all out comedy of silliness or it could try to make a statement about aging and dealing with decisions that we've made. While this movie never says anything profound, it also never goes silly enough.
The cast is lead by a frankly bored looking John Cusack. He plays a sad sack insurance salesmen recovering from a breakup. It's his nephew who accompanies the group to the past. Cusack plays the straight man to the much wackier supporting cast.
While even people born later than 1989 might enjoy this movie, those of us who remember the 1980s will get more out of it. Buried in the film there are a few 1980s Easter Eggs. William Zabka, whom you might remember as the blonde kid who gets his ass kicked by Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid, has a cameo appearance. There's a moment recreated from John Hughes Sixteen Candles. And several references are made to the movie Red Dawn.
They should have really run with that 1980s theme. The entire cast should have been played by stars from the 1980s. People like Mathew Broderick, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall as stars would have amped up the nostalgia level.
Clark Duke as Jacob, Cusack's nephew in the film, gets some of the movies' funniest lines. "This is scientifically possible." He exclaims at one point. "I write Stargate Fanfiction so I oughta know!" However, it's another 1980s throwback Crispin Glover who steals every scene he's in. First by playing a surly one-armed bellboy in the present and then as the same more lighthearted two-armed bellboy in the past with a running joke where he almost loses his arm numerous times. Glover seems to be one of the few actors in the movie who's playing his part with the level of mockery that it requires.
As someone who remembers the 1980s with some fondness despite the horrible fashion and hair of the times, I was looking forward to this movie for some good old nostalgic fun. And while I wasn't bored and I did laugh occasionally, it wasn't all I had hoped it would be.
