Back to the ‘80s … again
Jeremy Clemmons
Staff Writer
“Ah, youth is wasted on the young, and how silly and desperate and ambitious and dreamy we were, and now we are past twenty and our growth spurts and first loves have signed off, our tapestries slowly woven. But how we dream of returning to a time when we could change everything with the power of foresight and revel in the stupidity and the indulgence, the addictions before they were addictions, and the sex without a grain of worry, if just for one more last time.” – George Bernard Shaw
It’s a stupid title—and an even stupider idea. But in spite of this stupidity, or rather because of this stupidity, “Hot Tub Time Machine” begins to work, tackling time and memory at face-value simply because, it can. Like Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” science fictional elements in Steve Pink’s film are not meant to be slobbered all over by computer geeks and engineering nerds. You accept the premise and move from there. Well, not quite. Part of what’s so ridiculously pleasurable about “Hot Tub Time Machine” is that it doesn’t make any sense, that is unrelentingly “retro,” kitsch, and playfully hetero. More on this later.
Yes, the premise: In an effort to get together and reminisce over their glory days in the ‘80s, Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson) and Lou (Rob Corddry, who absolutely steals the show), along with Adam’s twenty-something nephew Jacob (Clark Duke), revisit the ski lodge where they misspent their youth. As they relax in the ancient hot tub, a super-jolty energy drink spills on the temperature gauge and deliberately cheesy special effects blast the foursome to 1986.
But 1986 isn’t just some randomly selected year for ironic pop-cultural humor and sidesplitting retro-ness. It is the annus mirabilis of our protagonists, the year when the future was bright and sunny in front of them, until it is crashed down just like four half-naked men into the near past. Our pathetic time travelers must now decide whether to alter history or, in the spirit of “Back to the Future,” preserve the present as it someday will be.
What’s so refreshing about “Hot Tub Time Machine” is that it inverts and parodies what we have come to privilege and expect from male-fantasy motion pictures. References are not geared towards younger audiences (though most of us know them, even if we were still gumming mashed corn from our high chairs when the decade had just passed), and beyond the simple one-liners is a genuine appreciation by Pink for what ‘80s films are about. The choice of Cusack isn’t accidental, and he seems as happy as he has ever been in this role. Perhaps even as delighted as while he was stealing peeks at Molly Ringwald’s underwear in “Sixteen Candles.” There are a few cameos, too (don’t worry, I won’t spoil the fun).
It’s refreshing to see a comedy laugh at itself, at its own borrowed tropes and gathered riffs. In the end the film asks us to consider the things we borrowed and gathered when we were young, to consider youth as something that doesn’t just float away but comes rushing back at the wave-speed of a Jacuzzi.
Grade: B+
