Susan Granger’s review of “Hot Tub Time Machine” (M.G.M./UA)
Imagine the guys in “The Hangover”/“Old School” going “Back to the Future,” and you have this raunchy comedy that plunges three regretful middle-aged men and their nerdy young companion into a surreal time-travel adventure.
When obnoxious, alcoholic Lou (Rob Coddry) almost dies of carbon-monoxide poisoning, his long-time buddies Adam (John Cusack) and Nick (Craig Robinson) decide to take him away for a ski weekend. Frustrated, henpecked Nick long ago abandoned his dreams of being a rock singer, while Adam is a loser whose girlfriend just moved out and he’s saddled with caring for his nerdy, couch-potato nephew Jacob (Clark Duke). So the quartet takes off for Kodiak Valley, once renowned for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.
Problem is: the party scene there has long passed by. Instead, there’s a deserted town with a decrepit hotel and a one-armed bellman (Crispin Glover) with an attitude. With nothing else to amuse them, they fire up the Jacuzzi, accidentally spilling a Russian energy drink on the controls. Presto! They’re back in 1986, and a startling glimpse in the mirror reveals that they’ve reverted to their younger selves. While they’re warned by an enigmatic hot tub repairman (Chevy Chase) that that must repeat whatever they did back then – so as to not rupture the time/space continuum – they get distracted. Adam reunites with a sexy playmate (Lyndsy Fonseca) whom he irrationally dumped and meets the bright journalist (Lizzy Caplan) he should have married. Nick is back in his warbling heyday. And boorish Lou fusses and fights with a pugnacious ski patrol dude (Sebastian Stan). Only Jacob is determined to get back to the future, so he can be born.
Writers Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris, along with director Steve Pink (“High Fidelity,” Grosse Point Blank”), assemble a chaotic collage of crude, vulgar and ridiculously funny episodes that are eventually peppered with unexpected warmth.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Hot Tub Time Machine” is a shaggy, subversive 7, evoking nostalgia in baby-boomers and grossed-out, politically-incorrect, R-rated guffaws from everyone else.
