HOT TUB TIME MACHINE Review

Brace yourself, because this may be a bit much to comprehend. HOT TUB TIME MACHINE is a smart comedy. It's hard to believe that a movie with a title and premise this ridiculous would be smart, but it's actually a very well thought out movie. It's a hilarious sex comedy written by cool geeks. It takes all the rules and little things from every time travel movie ever made, throws them in a hot tub, adds some alcohol and perhaps a little bit of a variety of illicit drugs then dives right in.

HOT TUB is painfully funny. I mean that as it's the funniest movie I've seen in years. It's funny on the level TROPIC THUNDER or OLD SCHOOL. At a good amount of jokes I was laughing so hard I had to clutch my stomach because of how hard I was laughing. I was rolling all around in my chair, I think I may have been an annoyance to the person in front of me. There are some jokes that had me laughing so hard I missed the next few lines of dialogue. There are very few jokes that miss the mark. But for the most part, you really won't care to notice the bad jokes.

The story is simple. Three life long friends who aren't exactly friends anymore and one of their nephews go to the ski resort the three of them had one of the best weekends of their lives at to helps one who tried to kill himself feel better. Then, the stumble upon a hot tub that takes them back to 1986 and they have to get back. So, it's pretty much mixing THE HANGOVER and BACK TO THE FUTURE.

Why this movie works so well is that the actors all make you believe this is happening. Well, in a sense. They make you care about them, all their little arcs and you believe these characters and who they say they are. John Cusack is likable and kind of the main guy we care about. It's been a while since Cusack really was a great likable guy. I'd say this is the most I've liked him since HIGH FIDELITY. And he's actually funnier in this movie than he was in 2012 (which is a pretty damn good compliment, he was hilarious in 2012). Craig Robinson is still Craig Robinson, but he's never unlikable as himself (except in MISS MARCH, but after this, I will pretend he was never in that movie).

Rob Corddry has never been well placed in a movie. He's been funny, but he usually comes off as just an ass hole and never care about him. Here, he's still an ass hole, but he does it in a way where you understand where he's coming from. You actually care about him and want him to succeed. Even though he just violates little squirrels unintentionally (which has one of the funniest jokes in the movie well after the initial set up). Clark Duke is great. I liked him in SEX DRIVE and really wanted to see him get casted more often (he's coming up in KICK-ASS in a few weeks) and see what he can do. I think we're definitely going to see more of this guy. While he's kind of the same style as SEX DRIVE, here's he's more on the unsure and sketchy side while he was the cool, suave guy in the previous film. But he's extraordinarily likable and for being a basement nerd, he's really cool.

Chevy Chase makes an appearance from time to time in a running joke on the "mystical time travel guide guy". I think some people might miss the joke, it's not really the character that's funny, but it's more of him trying to be the all knowing, mysterious guy who can help them get back. But instead of coming off the way the character (not the actor) intends, he sounds like a crazy, nonsensical moron. I'm sure that's what they were aiming for, and then to top it off, they throw in the *poof* exits. Where he goes off screen, they pan back to him and he's gone. It's not the most laugh out loud joke, but it works.

There is one extremely funny running gag involving time travel experience actor Crispin Glover which is probably my favorite part of the movie. It's so good and done so well that I don't want to even hint at what it's at. All I'll say is he's a bell hop who... I can't really say more without giving part of it away. But when he comes on screen, laughs are consistent.

I love all the time travel bits thrown in. They got set ups where items from the future fall into the hands of paranoid people who make drastic wrong assumptions. They have a great gag with Clark Duke fading in and out of existence due to never being born. Rob Corrdry using future knowledge to win bets. At first, everyone's trying to preserve the future by doing what they were doing as close as they can as they did 24 years ago, but eventually just say "to hell with it" and do whatever they want disregarding the effects. It all leads up to probably one of the most hilarious cut to credits I have ever seen.

I will definitely buy this on BluRay when it comes out. It's probably going to be a movie we remember for a long time. Right from the trailer when Craig Robinson says "Must be some kind of hot tub time machine," then looks directly at the camera (actually in the movie, not a scene made just for trailer purposes) it tells you that it knows how ridiculous it is. It's unapologetically ridiculous. The writers literally came up with the title, then wrote the movie around that title. Everything about it works. It creates it's own logic so it doesn't have to worry about being right or wrong and just goes off and has all the fun it can. While you'll still enjoy watching this alone, I highly suggest going to see this in a theatre with a lot of people. Grab your friends, a lot of them, and go see it at a prime time show. Something where the theatre is close to crowded, it's