Hot Tub Mother-Flipping Time Machine!

Hot Tub Time Machine – Steve Pink

One of the biggest hyped films of this year and it was comedy if you would believe it, a film advertised to the “younger” audiences with crude jokes, well known comedy actors and a sense of summer fun. Unfortunately the press was one of the best things about this film where the title alone is funny, it seems as those the title was thought of first and built up from there and not very far by the looks of things. It’s something a bit different, sure, it has its moments but at the same time, it tries too hard to both laugh-out-loud funny and has a sentimental side. I don’t want to watch a comedy about four dudes and a hot tub and expect me to learn a lesson about friendship or about how family is important, not the place for it. I expect to be laughing all the time, loads of crude jokes, and loads of jokes about the time they are sent back to. You do get that in the first 5 minutes, and you will laugh a lot during that time but it slowly turns to a smile or sometimes not even a response as the film suddenly gets serious, which it should never do. The cast is of well known actors like John Cusack, harking back to his days as a funny guy in High Fidelity, Craig Robinson, someone fairly unknown to the average Joe, but if your fan of The Office, then you’ll love his performance in this, clearly the stand out one. Through in a crazy performance from (insert name) who also steals the show as the madman who just wants to party, and you can see this guy being type casted in the future, playing the crazy friend and the ensemble also includes the youngest actor (insert name) who after good strong performances in Kick-Ass and the lesser known Sex Drive, and you can see he can work a good shtick when needed to. It’s a shame he’s slightly underused. Throw in random appearances from the fucking strange Crispin Glover who brings a couple of the funniest sequences in the film and the beautiful (insert name) who i love, so i can’t say anything bad about her!

The film follows three friends who go back to a lodge they used to use when they were teens and they begin to reminiss about the good times and end up getting drunk and diving into a hot tub. This is where shit goes down and they are transported back in the time to the 70’s in their youth where it seems they must play out their teenage time their again, but this time with knowledge of the future. They figure out they must stick to what they did as not to ruin the future and unfortunately comedy mishaps occur and they begin to change the future. It has a great ending actually which will surprised you because normally they would follow the trend of being good but here it’s used really well.

It’s up and down in places; you’ll laugh out loud a couple of times but other than that it misses out on being a really great Apatow-esque film.

6/10

Simon Childs