Hot Tub Time Machine

The Hangover was widely crowned a comedic masterpiece by audiences and critics alike. It won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical and grossed over 400 million dollars worldwide.

The Hangover is indeed very good, but a lesser-seen film, endlessly compared to The Hangover, is called Hot Tub Time Machine – a movie I claim is the Citizen Kane of comedy. That is obviously a hyperbole, but this movie is that great.

The film follows Adam (John Cusack) and Nick (Craig Robinson) as they reunite with their friend Lou (Rob Corddry) when he may or may not have attempted suicide while drumming along to a song in his car. How he does this I won’t reveal, but it is ludicrously funny.

After discovering their friend Lou is in trouble, Adam and Nick decide to rediscover better times by bringing Lou to the Kodiak Valley Ski Resort where they used to party in the nineteen eighties. Adam brings along his nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) and when the group arrives at the Ski Resort they quickly discover, like themselves, the place has turned to shit.

The group quickly hops in their room’s hot tub and are transported back in time as their former selves in 1986, except for Jacob who kinda’ stands outside time. I guess? The movie moves along with a lighting pace all headed by the genius performance by Rob Corddry, who was given free-reign to run wild as Lou. Every moment, every line, and every piece of body language has comedic value and entertainment wrapped in it. It reminded me of Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda, a performance that won him an Oscar.

Am I saying Corddry deserves an Oscar? Probably not, but his performance should not be ignored. He is able to mesh the difficult position of a fast-paced, joke-a-second screwball comedy with genuinely heart-felt moments of tenderness, regret, and the realizations of a life wasted.

Which raises another point – The Hangover also offers bromance and tenderness for its characters, as well as a plot much more feasible in space and time. Then why did Hot Tub Time Machine feel more real to me?

It might be because this film is based on fantasies and regrets we all have. Such as: What would have happened had I stuck with her or him? Why didn’t I become who I wanted to be? What if I’d thought of that million-dollar idea first? Is life really preordained? And even a surprisingly profound question: Is time linear?

How about the comment: “Oh, her? We’re not really friends anymore. We just kinda’ grew apart.” Have you ever said that? I sure have. All these ideas are explored through the lens of screwball, gross-out comedy.

There is an exchange that really struck a cord with me – when Adam is arguing with his ex-girlfriend about her dumping him. She dismisses his sadness, commenting that he has a lot of success ahead of him and he painfully replies that he doesn’t.

When people ask me what this movie was like I say it is kind of like A Christmas Carol meets Dumb & Dumber. I mean it.

Hot Tub Time Machine is a paradox. It provides rapid-fire jokes with characters so destroyed by regret and emptiness that we kind of see ourselves in them. Oh yeah, and there are like a thousand awesome pop-culture references from the eighties…

Release date March 2010

I say: A
You’ll say:B