Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Hot Tub Time Machine
★★☆☆☆
Directed by: Steve Pink
Written by: Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris
Admittedly, you can’t go into a movie called “Hot Tub Time Machine” with high expectations. But I did kind of think that it had the potential to be a stupid/silly good time, and attributed the fact that it doesn’t have much community love to the fact that the premise is ridiculous. I was in a mood where ridiculous premises were okay by me, so I gave it a shot. The thing is, the premise isn’t the problem here, and in fact it’s a medium entertaining dude-oriented romantic comedy (which is to say it’s very bromantic). That should be enough to earn it a modest three stars. The main problem is that it isn’t very funny. I could forgive almost everything else that Hot Tub Time Machine struggles with if only there had been some decent laughs, but there are really none.
The truly distasteful aspect of the movie, though, is that it seems like the moral of the story is that the only way you can change your life for the better is by going back and doing it all over again, making completely different decisions. Apparently, it also helps to have the deck stacked heavily in your favor. There was even the potential for something along those lines to be said in a funny, ironic or ridiculous fashion considering the means for the shift comes from the character who seems to be the most stuck in the past at the start of the film. But never mind all that, because Hot Tub Time Machine may have potential, but it squanders all of it at every opportunity and leaves in its wake a silly trifle that is safely and easily skipped.