Walking out of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 the publicist asked me, “What did you think Brad?” I replied, “That was pretty bad.” I then heard someone behind me say, “At least it was free.” This is how we’re judging our entertainment now? At least it was free? I don’t know about you, but my time is worth more than nothing and whether it’s my job or not, or whether I had to pay money for it or not, I’m tired of wasting my life in a movie theater watching grown men tell “jokes” I was making when I was in elementary school.
This is a movie so bad the studio couldn’t even bother to update the synopsis on the film’s Facebook page other than to add “Sequel to the” before rehashing the old plotline: 2010 comedy which followed a group of best friends who’ve become bored with their adult lives: Adam (John Cusack) has been dumped by his girlfriend; Lou (Rob Corddry) is a party guy who can’t find the party; Nick’s (Craig Robinson) wife controls his every move; and video game-obsessed Jacob (Clark Duke) won’t leave his basement. After a crazy night of drinking in a ski resort hot tub, the men wake up, heads’ pounding, in the year 1986. It’s their chance to kick some past and change their futures.
Best part about that, Cusack isn’t even in this movie, though his character is referenced and Adam Scott plays his illegitimate son in the future, yet Cusack’s whereabouts remain unknown.
So what is this movie actually about? Well, it’s yet another drama masquerading as an outrageous comedy telling the story of an asshole father (Corddry) and his asshole friend (Robinson) learning to rehabilitate their asshole ways. Corddry’s Lou Dorchen has gone back in time and created Louggle, making him an online mogul all while he runs the company into the ground and treats his employees like shit. Meanwhile, Robinson’s Nick Webber has gone back and ripped off several pop hits and claimed them as his own making him a music superstar and, go figure, he treats his wife like dirt.
This leaves Jacob (Duke), Lou’s son, who hasn’t used the hot tub time machine to better his life one bit. Apparently, the decision to be his father’s whipping boy is a better life for him. Lou’s behavior, however, ends up his downfall as someone uses the time machine to shoot him in the crotch with a shotgun, setting Lou, Jacob and Nick on a time traveling excursion to save Lou’s life, even though I would have personally preferred they just let the jack ass die. After all, not even his son likes him and we as the audience definitely don’t care if he lives or dies.
Now I won’t pretend I didn’t have some fun with my review of the first movie I wrote that while it went for cheap laughs, “the writers managed to mix up cheap with absurd, goofy, crazy, idiotic and witty to the point it doesn’t feel like one big masturbatory session.” A masturbatory session is all this is, almost literally as two characters are shot in the face with “ball juice” in a scene I would prefer to say I never saw, more for its lack of humor than for its crudeness.
It’s interesting how the first film can so easily exist without any one character taking the comedic reigns and yet this one feels like a movie where a bunch of comedy sidekicks got lost without their leader. Corddry is the closest thing you get to a lead and this character is so utterly despicable and not in the least bit funny, it turns you off from the movie almost immediately. “The Daily Show” regular Jason Jones comes in as a loud mouth delivering zero laughs and the only times I found myself remotely chuckling was during the extended sequence in which Scott’s character is hopped up on drugs for nearly 24 hours. The best way to describe that is a psychadelic trip similar to the fantasy sequence in 22 Jump Street.
Word has it the original title for the film was going to be Hot Tub Time Machine 3, the thought being the group went into the future and skipped the second entry. Too bad instead of skipping the sequel, they didn’t go just far enough into the future to see how Hot Tub Time Machine 2 was actually going to turn out and decide not to make it at all.
