MOVIES

Confusion, Laughter and Other Stories
Hot Tub Time Machine is just an updated ‘80s movie with a twisted plot - and I loved it!

Hot Tub Time Machine is an uproariously funny film; that much is certain.  The outrageous antics of three middle-aged men and a tech-obsessed teenager had this audience member reduced to the brink of incontinence after three or four of co-writers Jarrad Paul’s (Yes Man) and Sean Anders’ (also writing the upcoming She’s Out of My League) hilarious jokes.   Scenes from the past intercut with out-of-place time travelers (who, by the way, are seen as their ‘80s selves by the people they meet in the past). It’s  a star cast with unexpected continuum changes by our heroes, and of course the quandary of time travel itself, rig the film, which came out late March, to become an instant cult legend. It is also a renewal of faith for John Cusack films after the horrible things he helped do to Hollywood in 2012.  Poison plays, sparks fly, and a two-armed doorman who is one-armed in the future, simply will not lose his arm - who, speaking of which, is played by Crispin Glover, the actor who portrayed the bespectacled George McFly in the Back to the Future films. 

So, here’s the basic idea- there’s three guys: Adam, Nick, and Lou.  Adam has recently broken up with his girlfriend and has a stay-at-home nephew Jacob who lives with him.  Nick is a former musician with an unfaithful wife who gets paid to “stick his finger up dogs’ butts,” and Lou is an eternally high drinker who tries to kill himself in his garage.  After Lou’s treatment, Adam, Nick, and Jacob are charged with watching him for two weeks until he can be trusted on his own.  The three take Lou to Kodiak Valley, once a wild vacation spot and now a boarded-up ghost town populated by mainly squirrels.  Set up in the same hotel room where they stayed 24 years ago, the three - and a reluctant Jacob- have a wild night of drinking in their hot tub, spill a Russian soda on the control panel, and wake up in 1986.  To make a long story short, there are legwarmers, vomit, hand soap, Ski Patrol, an evaporating handyman, false accusations of Communism, and true love - of course.  But the main thing I don’t understand about this is that Jacob warns the three (hidden by the illusion of their ‘80s bodies) that they must do everything exactly as they did 20 or so years ago, or they will cause a butterfly effect that will change innumerable things in the future- present- whatever, including Jacob’s birth.  But if everything the three did has already happened - if they’ve already done it - how could they help not doing  it again? The future may not be set in stone, but the past is.  In any case, the main characters can’t stop messing things up.  Let’s just say there’s a happy ending for everyone in the end.

This movie takes me back to the copies of Sixteen Candles, Grosse Pointe Blank, and Home Alone - yes, Home Alone- I would stay up nights watching.  It’s a film reminiscent of Back to the Future, with the dilemmas, twists, and turns that a good film produces; with comedy thrown in like generous portions of spices along the way.