Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (4 out of 10) – Directed by Steve Pink; Written by Josh Heald; Starring Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Adam Scott, Gillian Jacobs; Rated R for crude sexual content and language throughout, graphic nudity, drug use and some violence; 93 minutes.
Did you see “Hot Tub Time Machine”? Did you like it? Then, you might enjoy its sequel, especially if you thought to yourself, “You know, I don’t really like the main storyline with John Cusack or the sort of nice sentiment it brings to this gross-out comedy. Let’s get rid of him and just let it be all about Rob Corddry doing his schtick as the world’s biggest a-hole.” And then you’d have this sequel.
The original “Hot Tub Time Machine,” while not really a classic film, still managed to be a pretty decent movie, since it relied on a simple premise: a group of guys go back in time to that one ski trip in the 80’s that could have been the turning point for their lives. And they fix everything they screwed up previously. Except for Lou (Corddry), who remains back in the 80’s, using his knowledge of the future to become the frontman for Mötley Crüe and inventing the internet.
Which leads us to this sequel. Idiot man-boy Lou gets shot at his birthday party, leading his friends to take him to the time machine and attempt to go back to prevent his death. Instead they end up 10 years in the future in 2025, trying to solve Lou’s murder. And they manage to replace John Cusack with Adam Scott.
While the first film attempted to cash in on 80’s nostalgia and playing on tropes from 80’s movies, some of which starred Cusack. There is no such nostalgia for the future, but instead a lot of vague dystopian musing about “What if Smart Cars had artificial intelligence and used it to murder people?” and “What if reality shows involved man-on-man rape?”
It ends up being a muddled mess, with a lot of vaguely connected jokes and gags. So, while I’ll admit I laughed a lot, those didn’t add up to any more than a bunch of disconnected dirty jokes.
But, if you like gross-out comedies from arrested-development-suffering man-boys, you might enjoy “Hot Tub Time Machine 2.” There’s also some fun discussions about the nature of time travel and references to lots of other, better time travel movies (Terminator, Looper) and basic tropes.
But everyone else? I’d recommend spending the weekend with almost any other time-travel related movie. Or hot tub related movie.
4 out of 10