Four guys go on a vacation to an old ski resort that three of them had stayed at back in the day. The fourth guy is Adam's (John Cusack) nephew. When they get there the town is now rundown, not what they remembered. One night they get in a time machine, spill an energy drink all over the console, and accidentally transport themselves back to 1986 and relive much of their past. The only other notable actors in the film are Chevy Chase as the mysterious hot tub repairman and Crispin Glover as the bell hop.
This film is a comedy. It is a comedy with a ridiculous premise that has hope for being funny. Instead it is quite the opposite expect for maybe a total accumulated fifteen minutes here and there but that doesn't make up for the other hour and a half. It's nothing but a concept movie that tries to be funny in itself by throwing the characters back into another time period and giving them lots of booze, drugs, and sex to deal with. At least some of the cast can act. Unfortunately this has to be one of the worst films I have ever seen John Cusack apart of. (I heard horrible things about 2012 but haven't seen it).
The idea of time travel has been utilized in so many ways in so many films, some in which were successful. The films that were successful also had plot and story. This film has neither. It also is far from funny ... that is unless you absolutely love sex jokes. That's what about two thirds of the film amounts to. Sure there are a few jokes that relate to the 80's and the advancement of technology but for the most part the jokes revolve around sex and a lot of things that happen are terribly random. It's taking this genre of comedy and mixing with science fiction with some decent and some good actors and creating a film that really has no redeeming value except for maybe the very slight message of sticking with friends.
If you love sex jokes you'll probably find this film hilarious but that by no means that is by any chance a quality film. It feels a lot like The Hangover and many people are saying that it's this year's The Hangover. The only problem is that in The Hangover things were just plain wrong while being hilarious. In Hot Tub Time Machine everything is just plain wrong.
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