HOT TUB TIME MACHINE
A while back I posted a trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine. A great cast with an outrageous premise, where the bulk of the movie takes place in 1986 after our heroes, well…get into a Hot Tub Time Machine. By my estimation, the movie completely delivered the laughs, although there is one curious thing about it that I observed…
First off, this movie is hilarious. It has multiple homages to movies from the 80′s, as well as some great running jokes. Make no bones about it, this movie is silly, and you should know that from the title alone, but it is silly in the good kind of way. It’s a very fun watch, and there were numerous times I laughed out loud.
Here’s the short version: Three lifelong friends who have fallen out of touch decide to cheer up their friend who attempted suicide, but really didn’t, (or did he?), by going back to a ski lodge where they had some of the best times of their lives. As such, they jump into the Hot Tub, (it’s also a time machine!), and get transported back to 1986, where they decide the best course of action is to do things exactly as they did before, so as to not create any butterfly effects. Of course, when given the opportunity to changes things, will they?
The cast is all great in their respective roles, each fitting comfortably into their on screen personas. They all pull off all the gags and jokes with perfect aplomb. I was especially impressed with the young man in the movie, Clark Duke as Jacob. He did a great job of keeping pace with the trio of more experienced comedic actors. It was also really great to see Cusack doing a movie like this. He looked like he was just having fun being there, and it translated to his performance and the comraderie between him and his co-stars.
Crispin Glover, one of my favorite entertainers, is a scene stealer, and rightly so. We first meet him as an angry one-armed bellhop. He plays it perfectly, and my only complaint was that I wish we would have seen more of him as the angry bellhop. You see, after traveling back in time and seeing him with both his arms, he is a different person, for obvious reasons. This becomes one of the running gags in the movie, ‘how does he lose his arm?’ Anytime it seems like it’s going to happen, the gang all stop to see how it plays out, such as one scene where Crispin is carving ice sculptures with a chainsaw.
I really felt that Chevy Chase was underused. With Chevy, it seems that people either like him or don’t, no middle ground. I happen to really like him a lot, so I was looking forward to seeing him being Chevy in this movie, but he just seemed to be downplayed, relegated to a one note role. Too bad for me, but non-fans may like to know that he has hardly any screen time, and he plays it pretty straight.
What about that curious observation I mentioned in the opening paragraph? Ok, it goes like this: As the Mrs. and I found our seats, I looked around the theater at the audience. I was curious as to what the age group would be that’s seeing this movie. With about 30 people already in their seats, I noticed that the majority of them were either teenagers or twenty-somethings. There were a few people in my age bracket scattered about, but not that many. As I watched more people coming into the theater, I noticed the majority of them were also teenagers and twenty-somethings. When the movie started, only about 1/3 of the audience were Generation X, with a couple baby boomers here and there, and the remaining 2/3 were well below 30, probably hitting around the 17-24 year old mark. Interesting.
As it turns out, the constant stream of laughter came from those around my age, the Generation X’ers. You could tell that a lot of the jokes were flying over the heads of those younger. While I understand the motivation for them to see this movie, I know it fell short of their expectations. Sure, there were some gross out gags in the movie that they laughed at, and some other jokes about more current celebrities, but the meat of the movie, the bulk of what made this movie so great, was rooted in the humor of the time they time traveled to, the 80′s. Considering that most of those present in the theater with me and the Mrs. weren’t even born yet, I know they couldn’t appreciate a lot of the smaller touches in the movie.
Now I’m not saying that they couldn’t or shouldn’t like this movie, far from it. The movie is peppered with enough visual gags and current pop culture references, (although the MANIMAL reference had me in stitches), to tickle their funny bone. I’m actually quite glad to see them attending a movie like this so they can see some of the horrors that they’ve avoided by having not been a teen, or older, in the 1980′s. But you know what? As surreal as that decade was, I’ll take the 80′s over the 90′s any day of the week. So join me, fellow Generation X’ers, and go have a fun time and a hearty laugh with HOT TUB TIME MACHINE!
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One Comment
good to know as I haven’t made it to this one, but now it’s at the cheap movies and I will definitely go get some snacks and head out to see it on the big sceen.
Cindy
5/28/2010
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